396 THEODORE WATERS 



The chart making typewriter has been especially designed 

 for the government. It looks like an ordinary typewriter, 

 but you could not write a letter on it, for instead of ordinary 

 type, the characters are like the printer's queer type — arrows, 

 circles, squares, dashes, etc. The local official inserts a blank 

 chart in the machine and writes aerial conditions on the face 

 of it. The large offices print their charts on a press; the 

 smaller stations mimeograph the typewritten chart. The 

 whole operation carried on simultaneously all over the coun- 

 try is completed in half an hour. Each station scatters its 

 charts and predictions over the district of which it is the cen- 

 ter, so that in one hour from the time the observations are 

 made, the whole country has documentary evidence of the 

 weather probabilities for the succeeding twelve hours. How 

 really remarkable is this distribution is shown by the fact that 

 in addition to the thousands of governmental observators 

 above mentioned, 31,000 addresses are served daily with the 

 weather forecast by telegraph, telephone, mail, and railway 

 train service without cost to the government except for sta- 

 tionery. In fact, not counting newspaper circulation, the 

 United States weather forecasts must reach at least 50,000 

 central points of distribution; many of them twice a day. 

 Besides the bureau has an adjunct department devoted to 

 crop reporting. There are 10,000 crop correspondents scat- 

 tered throughout the country — men who report weekly the 

 state of the crops as affected by climatic changes. These 

 reports are compiled into bulletins, which are issued by thou- 

 sands in the form of 168 different state monthly crop bulletins, 

 and forty two monthly general bulletins. 



In connection with the forecaster's prediction of usual 

 weather conditions, it is interesting to note this statement of 

 Prof. Bigelow on the approach of hurricanes : 



''The physical features of hurricanes are well understood. 

 The approach of a hurricane is usually indicated by a long 

 swell on the ocean, which forewarns the observer by two or 

 three days. A faint rise in the barometer occurs before the 

 gradual fall which becomes very pronounced at the center; 

 fine wisps of cirrus clouds are first seen, which surround the 

 center to a distance of 200 miles; the air is calm and sultry, 



