Krick's Weather

In Washington last week U. S. Weather Bureau officials cautiously told newshawks that they were having good luck with "air-mass analysis," a new weather forecasting technique which consists of a vertical examination of atmospheric conditions rather than a horizontal survey at Earth's surface. On five days during the previous week the Washington office received upper air data from Harvard's Blue Hill Observatory, where small sounding balloons were sent up with radio-meteorographs. These little gadgets contain a thermometer, hygrometer (humidity recorder), barometer, shortwave radio transmitter and batteries, encased in a streamlined aluminum shell, the whole weighing about 2 lb. One of the balloons went up 12 miles. In Washington it was observed that a storm had penetrated that far into the stratosphere--or rather, that the storm had lifted to 12 miles the lower boundary of the stratosphere, since that region is by definition a calm, "weatherless" stratum.

The air-mass theory holds that great masses of cold air and others of warm air rolling over the earth make weather by their interaction, causing rain, fog, snow. When a "cold front" slides over a "warm front" the air at the boundary is twisted and violent disturbances are likely to occur. The Weather Bureau is by no means the U. S. pioneer in this meteorological technique. In fact the Bureau's critics, of which it always has plenty, have reproached it for not making greater use of the method once its value was demonstrated. The Bureau has a quick retort: it is doing what it can on its exiguous budget ($3,861,000 for the current year).

Air-mass analysis was developed in Norway and was taken to the U. S. by Dr. Irving Parkhurst Krick of California Institute of Technology, who started using it for the benefit of air lines in 1932. The late Harris M. Hanshue, then president of Western Air Express, found the Krick forecasts 96.1% accurate, estimated that they saved him $35,000 in one year. Currently Dr. Krick's best customers are cinema producers, who some time ago discovered that good weather for outdoor "shooting" is one thing that even Hollywood cannot buy. Dr. Krick's uncanny ability to predict, a day or so in advance, the hour when rain will start or stop, when fog will roll in or lift, is reputed to bring him fat fees from cinema coffers.

Everyone was aware by last week that the U. S. had had a freakish winter. Easterners had warm, muggy weather with almost no snow. The greatest floods on record poured down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. California orange-growers were hit by a cold snap such as they had not known for years. Dr. Krick bobbed up with a pat explanation for these phenomena. This 31-year-old meteorologist, who was a stockbroker's assistant and once a piano accompanist, predicted last September that Southern California was in for a cold, wet winter. He believes that, although the boundaries between cold and warm air masses are constantly shifting, they tend to keep average positions on the map which he calls "semipermanent boundaries." One of these lies east of the Rockies, separating cold air on the east from warm air on the coast. Last year this boundary moved west until it was out in the Pacific Ocean, letting cold air flow over California. Incidentally, last summer it also carried unusual rains into Utah and Arizona, robbing States farther east of their moisture and causing drought conditions there.

Another Krick boundary lies in the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard, separating warm Gulf Stream air from cold continental air. This boundary moved west until it lay some 200 miles inland, bringing warm weather to the coastal States. Quick thaws in this region contributed something to the Ohio floods. Another flood factor was the migration of the Rockies boundary into the Pacific Ocean. This allowed low-pressure centres to swing all the way down the western U. S. before moving east. These centres thus picked up moist tropical air around the Gulf of Mexico, then carried it northeast and deposited the water in the flood valleys.

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