Some idea of the vast interests floating on the Atlantic coast may be had when it is stated that 5628 trans-Atlantic steamers, with an aggregate of 10,076,148 tons, and 5842 sailing craft, aggregating 2,105,688 tons, entered and left ports on the Atlantic seaboard during a single year ten years ago, and the record is vastly greater now. The value of their cargoes is more than a billion and a half of dollars. Our coastwise traffic is enormous. Fifteen years ago more than seventeen thousand sailing vessels and four thousand steamers entered and left the ports between Maine and Florida. The number has largely increased since. From these facts one can roughly measure the value of the marine property which the Weather Bureau aims to protect by giving warning of approaching storms.
It is the expectation of the meteorologist that some day he will be able to accurately forecast the weather for weeks and months in advance. What a wonderful conservation of human energy would result if it were possible to tell the farmer when the great corn and wheat belts would have abundant rain during the next growing season, or when droughts would parch and wither the vegetation; or to truthfully inform the planter of the South that the coming season would be favorable or unfavorable for the production of cotton! Effort could be withheld in one part of the country, and greater energy exerted in another.
This extension of forecasting doubtless will be accomplished as the result of further study of solar impulses which disturb the orderly processes of the earth’s atmosphere and initiate storms, combined with a comparative study of meteorological data. We may be laying the foundation of a great edifice which shall adorn the civilization of future centuries.
As storms of more or less intensity pass over large portions of our country every few days during the greater part of the year, and as it is seldom that the weather report does not show one or more storms as operating somewhere within our broad domain, it is easy for some charlatan to forecast thunderstorms about a certain time in July, or a cold wave and snow about a certain period in January, and stand a fair chance to accidentally become famous as a prophet. One may select any three equidistant dates in January and forecast high wind, snow, and cold for New York City, and stand a fair chance of having the fraudulent forecast verified in two out of the three cases, provided that you claim a storm coming the day before or the day after one of your dates is the storm that you expected.
From the introduction of the electro-magnetic telegraph in 1844 down to 1869 intermittent advocations were made by many in this country for a national weather service. Finally Doctor Increase A. Lapham, of Milwaukee, scientist and philanthropist, so aroused the property and financial interests of the country with the facts that he presented relative to the destruction of life and property by storms on Lake Michigan that Congress, under provisions of a bill introduced by General Halbert E. Paine, was induced to appropriate money to initiate a service. To General Albert J. Meyer, Chief Signal Officer, U. S. A., was intrusted the duty of inaugurating a tentative weather service by deploying over the country as observers the military signalmen of his command. From this beginning has evolved the present extensive Weather Bureau, which is the largest in the world and more intimately serves the needs of the public than any other.
In 1869 Professor Cleveland Abbe published a weather bulletin at Cincinnati, based upon simultaneous observations secured by telegraph from about thirty stations. He was the first scientific assistant to General Meyer and remained continuously with the service until his death in 1919. Colonel (afterward Brigadier-General) H. H. C. Dunwoody, U. S. A., served twenty-seven years as an expert forecaster or as the assistant chief of the Weather Bureau. General A. W. Greely, of Arctic fame, the last of the military chiefs, succeeded Brigadier-General William B. Hazen on the death of the latter. Professor Mark W. Harrington was the first chief of the new civil Weather Bureau; he served but four years and was succeeded by Professor Willis L. Moore, who remained chief for eighteen years, serving two years under President Cleveland, who appointed him, and during the entire administrations of McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, and was removed by Woodrow Wilson immediately on taking office. Professor Moore claims the honor of having been the first presidential appointee to incur the displeasure and receive the public condemnation of Woodrow Wilson. The present chief is Professor Charles F. Marvin, who for many years served as an assistant to Professor Moore.
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