The record-union., 1891-02-22
COMPLAINT AGAINST THE SIGNAL
SERVICE.

COMPLAINT AGAINST THE SIGNAL
SERVICE.
There is danger of too much of the
Technology of science being projected
into the practical affairs of every day life.
In the common communications Of busi-
ness the use of the technical term with
meaning perhaps dissimilar, or opposed
to the commonly accepted Interpretation,
is liable to create misapprehension and
to do infinite harm.
This truth is just now vividly illus
trated in the case of Signal Service Officer
Finley at San Francisco, whose duty it is
to make up weather forecasts and furnish
them to the local press besides telegraph
ing reports to the East.
Lieutenant Finley, newcomer, in
sists in his reports upon speaking of the
winds that bring us the grateful and
gentle, as well as the heavy rain showers,
as cyclones" Now, as matter of fact,
cyclones, as understood at the East, are
unknown on the Pacific Coast. A cy
clone, in the popular acceptation of the
term, is a wind-storm rotary in its mo-
ton and moving along a narrow track
with great destructive force, uprooting
trees, boring into the earth, demolishing
houses and even lifting them and
carrying them long distances. Death and
ruin mark the path of the cyclone; the
giants of the forests are twisted like
straw, by these irresistible circular hurri-
canes, and the mightiest monarchs of the
woods are snapped Off by the terrible
agency as pipe stems are broken in the
hand.
No such storms are here known; no
evidences in nature are found of their
ever having visited the coast. When
I4eutenant Finley, therefore, tells the
people that cyclone is moving here or
there, Up or down or across the coast;
that the center of the cyclone is at such a
point am viii reach such another point
at give hoas he leads many to believe
that a storm is meant, such as at the East
carries death, destructiol and misery in
its train. That such reports ere harmful
to the Pacific Coast goes without saying.
The Century Dictionary" defines a
cyclone to be "a severe and destructive
storm of brief duration following mar
row path and characterized by rotary
motion about the center of a low barom-
eter." Stormonth's dictionary defines
the word cyclone: ''a rotary hurricane"
and hurricane to be "a violent storm in
which the wind blows fitfully with pro-
digous force" Nuttalrs Standard Die
tionary gives cyclone this definition: An
intertropical rotary hurricane" Web
sters Dictionary has it: ga rotary storm
or whirlwind of extended circuit" Pro-
fessor George Davidson, of the United
Coast Survey, says the storms of our coast
certainly have none of the destructive
ness of the East Indian cyclones to which
the term was originally applied. This
exemption of our coast from severe
storms is shown by the records of the past
iOAty Gals III WHICH, tUcTG Is ilOt OI6 Ill
stance of wreck on lee shore, where
the vessel was properly found, in all the
stretch of coast from San Diego to the
Straits of Fuca.
Now Lieutenant Finley's insistence
upon using the word in his reports is,
says the President of the San Francisco
Chamber of Commerce, likely to result in
raising marine insurance rates, and this
opinion is concurred in by ship-owners,
sailors and merchant-shippers generally.
Besides all this, the use of the term
three and four times week as indica-
tive of our rain and wind-storms
which we so welcome and that do no
damage, wreck no ships, destroy no
houses, and not only awaken no fears,
but scarcely interrupt the social pleasures
and travel of the hour, at the East creates
the impression that we are subject here
to the storm Affections that are known in
the Mississippi Valley, and before which
the people in many parts flee to artificial
caves, and against the threat of which
they provide themselves with ''dug-outs"
or holes sloping into the ground in which
they can take refuge.
If Lieutenant Finley in addressing the
public will not use terms that are under
stood by the public in the common way
and according to the definitions given
them by such standards as Webster, The
Century, Stormonth and Nuttall, the
thing for the press to do is to refuse to
publish the reports as Lieutenant Finley
sends them in. Let the journals of the
day make the reports conform to the
truth by use of the words ''storm center'
for cyclone. But if the Chief Signal Ser
vice officer uses the cyclonic reports
from this coast in his reports and prognos-
tications communicated TO the Eastern
press, then our earnest appeal must be to
him to refrain from doing an injustice to
the coast by use of word that is gener-
ally received as indicating "a terror