200 
Frank Carney 
Weather Bureau stations. In each section the government 
maintains also regular Weather Bureau stations. In the Northern 
section there are three: at Cleveland, Sandusky, and Toledo; in 
the Middle section a station is maintained at Columbus; in the 
Southern section, one at Cincinnati. 
The value of a volunteer observer’s data depends on his train- 
ing and the instruments he has at his disposal. As a usual thing, 
the Federal government does not send out a very complete equip- 
ment of instruments to be handled by a volunteer observer. The 
regular Weather Bureau stations record very complete weather 
data; they measure the precipitation, tabulate the wind direc- 
tion and velocity for every minute of the twenty-four hours of 
the day; tabulate the periods of sunshine and cloud during the 
day; record the dates of appearances of frosts, and the velocity 
of particular storms, if unusual. Much of this is done automati- 
cally. Man is not sufficiently discerning or accurate to do some 
of these things; instead he has invented machinery that will do 
the work correctly. 
Illustrative records. The volunteer observers report periodi- 
cally to a Weather Bureau station. The data collected by the 
larger number of people who are working just for the love of it, 
together with the data of the regular stations, characterizes the 
weather of Ohio, and for the period concerned is a basis for de- 
scribing its climate. The results may be illustrated by reference 
to particular weather phenomena for a given period. For the 
year that closed in December, 1910, the mean annual temperature 
in the Northern section was 49.1°; in the Middle section, 50.6°; 
in the Southern section, 52.6°; for the whole state, 50.4°. But 
these facts are of little value unless we have some average or 
normal with which to compare the data. The normal tempera- 
ture for the Northern section is 50.1°; for the Middle section, 
50.9°; for the Southern secFon, 52.9°; for the whole state, 50.7°. 
The weather of Ohio, as already stated, is not monotonous; 
comparing one year with another we note the variation. The 
mean annual temperature in 1909 for the three sections and the 
whole state, in order, was 49.4°, 51°, 53.4°, and 50.9°. Last year 
was cooler than usual, while the preceding year was more than 
usually warm. 
But there is another fact always of great consequence in tem- 
perature conditions, that is, the temperature range. In 1910, in 
