Vol. XVI, No. 6 WASHINGTON 



June, 1905 







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MATHOMAL 



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MA3AZHMB 







FORECASTING THE WEATHER AND 



STORMS* 



By Professor Willis L. Moore, LL. D., 



Chief United States Weather Bureau and President National 



Geographic Society 



THE author would urge all intel- 

 ligent persons to abandon the 

 idea that the weather map is an 

 enigma too difficult for them to solve. 

 To one who will read this chapter once 

 or twice, and carefully follow the charts 

 as they at successive steps illustrate and 

 make clear the text, the daily weather 

 chart will be an object of interest as 

 well as pleasure and profit. Sometimes 

 the problems presented by the map 

 are so simple that one possessed of the 

 most elementary knowledge of its con- 

 struction can accurately forecast the 

 character of the coming weather ; and 

 again, the most expert forecaster is un- 

 able to clearly foresee the impending 

 changes. 



Weather maps differ as much as do the 

 members of the human family ; no two 

 are precisely alike, although they may 

 be similar in their fundamental charac- 

 teristics. Some are so radically dissim- 

 ilar to others that it requires but a 

 glance to learn that similar weather 



cannot follow both. Weather forecast- 

 ing may be fairly placed upon a plane 

 with the theory and practice of medi- 

 cine. The forecaster is in a degree 

 guided in his calculations by symptoms, 

 and he is able to diagnose the atmos- 

 pheric conditions with about the same 

 degree of accuracy that the skilled phy- 

 sician is able to determine the bodily 

 condition of his patient. He is able to 

 forecast changes in the weather with 

 rather more certainty than the physician 

 can predict the course and the result of 

 a well-defined disease. While but less 

 than a century ago we knew not whence 

 the winds came nor whither they went, 

 we are now able, through the aid of 

 daily meteorological observations and 

 the telegraph that joins our places of 

 observation by an electric touch, to 

 trace out the harmonious operations of 

 many physical laws that previously were 

 unknown, and that determine the go- 

 ings and the comings of the winds, and 

 the sequence in which weather changes 



* Copyright, 1905, by the National Geographic Society. 



