The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-07-06
New Weather System
 Out-Cuesses Nature
Communication TentacIes of Washington, D. C., Office
 Follow Three Great Air Routes of Eastern Air Lines

All OCLOpuS-lk0 byStClu VI tCAS~ type lines and radio channels, tap
 ping the 25 cities on the 3,755-mile
 Eastern Air Lines routes, is cen- tered in the weather-operations office of the airline at Washington, D. C., comprising the elaborate
 new weather department which operates 24 hours of the day, out guessing nature in all her angry
 m oods.
 The Air Mass Analysis System of weather forecasting, proved practical for airline operation only a few years ago on the Pacific Coast, has been instituted by Jo- seph George, chief meteorologist of Eastern Air Lines. In 1892 he
 collaborated with scientists of the in testing the method over a west ern airlines.
 The communication tentacles of the company weather bureau fol-
 low the three great air routes of
 Eastern Air Lines; New York to
 Miami, New York to New Orleans, and Chicago to Miami. Weather
 information is not only received by teletype and radio from the 15 states served by the airline, but two general and 46 trip forecasts are issued from the "octopus-lile brain" during the A hours, or practically one every one-half hour.
 In the general forecasts sent to
 every station at 9:30 a. m. and 9:30 p. m., the Eastern Air Lines air mass forecasts advise what trips will complete or cancel and
 where delays will occur before the l weather clears. The special trip forecasts are sent to pilots and dispatchers an hour before sched- | uled departures at the six major terminals so that a study can be
 made before any particular flight takes off.
 Supplementing hourly reports from various eastern points, the United States Weather Bureau
 also supplies the Eastern Air Lines Weather Bureau with two general 1 weather reports from the 250 ma- jor weather bureau stations as far
 north as Point Barrow, Alaska, Ca-
 nadian stations, and 10 ships at sea in the Atlantic ocean. These re- ports are received at S:25 a. m.
 and S:25 p. m.
 The information received by the airline and also that disseminated,
 gives ceilings of clouds, visibility
 of stations and the airway, gen.
 eral conditions, such as rain, snow,
 haze, fog and type of cloud forma-
 tions, temperature, dewpoint, wind metric pressure.
 In connection with the new l weather department Eastern Air
 Lines has inaugurated scientific treatment of each of the "A flights l made during the 24 hours over it's vast system. After collecting in- ! formation on winds aloft, their speed, and general weather condi- { tions, the weather department de- termines mathematically the cor-
 rect attitudes, course, and cruising speed for the pilot to use to reach
 his destination in the fastest time | with the greatest comfort to pass l engers. | Use of the air mass method | gives our pilots three dimension al picture of the atmosphere in l addition to providing a detailed
 analysis of it's properties" ex- plains MT. George. Atmospheric
 disturbances frequenting the Uni- ted States as shown by the, air
 mass method are caused by inter actions of air masses, brought to- gether in the general circulation of
 the atmosphere. "In the disturbances which fre- | quent this country there are two
 principal zones of activity, one the 'cold front" where violent move-
 ments take place, and the other the warm front, which causes
 severe icing conditions, but for the | most part is not dangerous to air.
 craft. We trace the movements of these fronts on our special weather
 maps in Washington and their di- rection and speed of, movement is
 known tosus so that we can fore
 cast their locations hours in ad-
 vance as thty approach any section
 of our routes.'
 Cold air masses have their im- mediate origin over the North Pa-
 cific ocean, North Atlantic ocean and between Hudson Bay and Alaska. Warm masses start from the northern part of the trade
 wind belt between the Hawaiian Islands and Lower California, over the Atlantic ocean between the Azores and the West Indies, Gulf