Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/519

Rh are able to produce. There is no secret or magic about the system of simultaneous observations, telegraphic reports, synoptic charts and weather maps of the U. S. Weather Bureau. The best scientific thought and the life work of some of the brightest scientific minds, together with long experience of the forecaster, are used in the discussion of these charts and observations in predetermining the weather elements for a day or two in advance. Many of the most eminent meteorologists, who have contributed so much in bringing our knowledge of the earth's atmosphere to where it is to-day—such as Maury, Ferrel, Abbe and Bigelow—were also astronomers, and it is not likely that they, in their research, should have overlooked the terrific planetary influences.

True, logical, scientific weather forecasts for a season, or a month even, in advance, is the aim and dream of the meteorologist and the inspiration of meteorological research all over the world. But in the light of all our present knowledge of original causation of variations and abnormalities in current weather and in the seasons, this meteorological 'millennium' is not yet. and there is work in plenty ahead for the earnest, capable investigator.

Will not the newspapers, the great enlighteners and disseminators of truth and knowledge in the present age, help these investigators by discouraging and discountenancing the publication of weather predictions founded upon such baseless theories as told in this paper?

The U. S. Weather Bureau is now erecting excellent observatories at Mt. Weather, located in northern.Virginia on a spur of the Blue Ridge Mountains. These observatories are to be fully equipped with the latest and most approved instruments and apparatus for observation and research in meteorology and allied sciences. Here will be given opportunity for collection, correlation and study of simultaneous observations and measurements of meteorological and magnetic elements, changes in the activities of the sun's atmosphere, solar energy, radioactivity, atmospheric electricity, etc. Also exploration of the upper levels of the atmosphere will be made by means of balloons. As stated by Professor Willis L. Moore, chief of the U. S. Weather Bureau, "Research at Mt. Weather will lie catholic in its broadness. There, we will look only for the truth, and shall not despise its source or the means of its conveyance."