THE WEATHER VS. THE NEWSPAPERS. 383 



mongers, at the expense of the equipped and reputable students of the 

 subject. 



4. By reason of a hypercritical but uninformed attitude toward the 

 daily forecasts of the United States Weather Bureau, by which the 

 work of the Bureau is hampered and its value to the public materially 

 reduced. 



Such is the situation. If the apprehension of the simple funda- 

 mental facts of the weather — taking the first count in the indictment 

 into consideration — were difficult, if the problems were beyond the 

 ability of the man in the street, one would excuse the newspaper and 

 quash the indictment, but the practical questions at issue are as clear 

 as crystal and as simple as A, B, C. There is no dispute among ob- 

 servers as to the fundamental facts, and the surface phenomena them- 

 selves are as regular as the progress of the sun from tropic to tropic. 

 The abstract and controversial discussion as to final causes which 

 occupies certain meteorologists is not germane, so far as the treatment 

 of the daily weather goes, and it is the newspaper, not the weather men, 

 who cannot tell a meteorological 'hawk from a hand-saw.' 



Because a Dolbear, a Trowbridge and a Lodge may not agree on the 

 ultimate expression for electric energy does not prevent a citizen from 

 distinguishing between arc and incandescent lights, or between a trolley 

 car and a call bell. And so it is with the simple weather facts. The 

 synthesis of American weather, which can be given in two sentences, 

 is within the understanding of any one, for American weather is the 

 resultant of a west to east drift in the general circumpolar circulation 

 of the north temperate zone, which drift is broken up into two great 

 eddies, and only two, the cyclonic and the anti-cyclonic; the former, 

 the cyclonic, the center of general storm phenomena, and the condi- 

 tion and cause of local storm disturbances (tornadoes, squalls, thunder- 

 storms, etc., as local conditions and the seasons determine); the latter, 

 the anti-cyclonic, the center of clear weather phenomena. Into this 

 circumpolar system intrude the tropical anti-cyclone and the tropical 

 cyclone, and play their part in the proper season and region. That is all. 



The great circumpolar drift moves in ceaseless round from the 

 Pacific to the Mississippi Valley, from the Mississippi Valley to the 

 Atlantic, from the Atlantic to Europe, to Asia, to the Pacific, and 

 back again. In it appear the two great atmospheric eddies, oftentimes 

 over a thousand miles in diameter, and covering 1,000,000 square 

 miles of the earth's surface. These two type eddies, the cyclonic and 

 the anti-cyclonic, are the real distributers of the weather, as we kDow 

 it. They can be seen to shift as a whole from west to east, not neces- 

 sarily along a straight line, however, for they have a way of bellying 

 down, or sidling from the northwest to the southeast, and from the 

 southwest to the northeast, or from all points in the west between 



