Evening star., 1932-01-31


simultaneously temperature of SO de-
prees in New England, with MaSSachu-
setts farmers doing their Spring poWlng
in January and Vermont housewives
gathering dandel.on green's from their
front lawns while Nebraska digs out
from under heavy Snowdrifts and New
Mexico is tortured by blizzard
these odd reveTSalS Of the past month
make the definition of "all right" some
what vague. Is cur weather mechanism
gigantic roulette wheel in which chance
is the only law
The peculiar Iasaries Of 1881 suggest
that it may be SO. Last year was warmer
than usual all oTer the United States, eX-
cept along the Southern Rio Grande bor-
der ard in Key West Fla. two Southern
regions that one might expect to be
baked a little hotter. but which instead
were colder than LSu3,.
Elsewhere over the continent the ex-
cess of heat above normal piled up enor-
NOUS surpluses by the end of 1881, ex-
ceeding 1000 degrees in some sections in
Milwaukee for example and in Duluth,
Sioux City, Peoria, Huron. S. Oak, and
Bismarck-yes the Identical Bismarck
that has some deep below-Zero notches IN
its blizzard-b bitten past
Such scattered Northern cities as
ithaca. N Y: Minneapolis, Salt Lake
City and Spokane Stewed through the
hottest days of their history in 1881 New
York always famous for lavish spending,
boarded 1858 degrees OF surplus heat,
while Philadelphia even more frugal and
proVident, stored up 1874 degrees.
And now it's turning out to be a gen
tie Winter in the East, though wild 'un
in the West Ice harvesters on the New
tot,1
cutting in January, have had to loaf most
of the time. Lunberjacks in Canada lost
their jobs because there's no snow for
hauling and in Nova Scotia, instead
OF freeze, came a flood. Robins showed
up in Toronto, graSshopper is reported
to have hoped in Ontario and in Penn
sylvania snakes crawled out of their Win
ter beds to greet the Spring-on Janu-
ary IA
That same day boys went swimming in
Lake Erie; next day snow fell in Los An
geles and rescue cars plowed through the
drifts to snowbound settlements in New
Mexico. In Boston woman was over
come by the heat and a few hundred
miles out on the Atlantic Ocean liners
battled through gales and wrestled with
waves so feet high.
Is it possible to resolve this crazy y-quilt
pattern of effects into any sure system of
determinable causes so that we may know
what to expect Of the weather q reason
able time before it hits US?
DR.. Charles G. Abbot, secretary of the Smi
sonian Institution, thinks it is, and he '
tell why. Dr. Abbot's speciality is the S,
For 30-odd years he has been studying
training up young men at the Smithsonian
study it as Langley trained him. and sendi
his disciples to faraway mountain tops
tt~, -
is only in cloudess, dustless, elevated plac
where the suns rays arrive with the miniml
Of absorption. that these delicate measul
ments of the solar constant of radiation C
be carried on effectively.
These studies have convinced DIR. Abbot tn
the solar constant" is not constant. The S
is a variable star. He finds its variation
curing in rhythmS, and by means of this re
ularity he has been able to predict the
months in advance. These studies of the sol
cycles led him to look for terrestrial cycles al
with the result that he finds an appare
rhythm in the weather corresponding to
rhythm in the sun.
IT is a startling announcement. The discovt
! may prove to be the most revolutionary a
vance in the whole history of meteorology. F,
if the weather on the earth recurs in, pa
tern which reflects changes in the suns raj
alton, and if the solar changes are predictat
months in advance it follows that weather
the earth is predictable months in advance.
do you regard long-range weather for
casting as a possibility?" 1 asked Dr. abb
meeting him on one of those strange Janua
days when Spring zephyrs lulled the Northea
into drowSy somnolence and a snowstOrm rag
in the surprised Southwest.
Il do" answered the head of the Smit
sonian Institution. IF what we have -four
turns out to be the real thing, 1t seems pc
missible to hope that weather can be predicte
not only months, but years in advance.
And what have the Smithsonian explorers
the sun and the weather found?
For the last 25 years we have been makir
measurements of the solar radiation at vario
points on the earth. During the last IL year
with improved instruments and an exception
ally favorable observing station in Chile, v
have made extremely accurate and signiflcal
measurements of this energy output which IL
earth is continually receiving from the SUI