Reading the WeatherLongstreth, T. Morris (Thomas Morris)
Science
Reading the Weather
Longstreth, T. Morris (Thomas Morris)
Weather forecasting
Cirro-Cumulus to Alto-Stratus 48
Alto-Stratus 80
Cumulus 96
Stratus 128
Nimbus 160
FORECAST
Science is certainly coming into her own nowadays,--and into everybody
else's. Every activity of man and most of Nature's have felt her
quickening hand. Her eye is upon the rest. Drinking is going out because
the drinker is inefficient. The fly is going out because he carries germs.
And for everything that goes out something else comes in that makes people
healthier and more comfortable, and, perhaps, wiser.
One strange thing about this flood-tide of science is that it overwhelms
the old, buttressed superstitions the easiest of all, once it really sets
about it. For instance, nothing could have been better fortified for
centuries than the fact that night air is injurious and should be shut out
of house. Then, science turned its eye upon night air, found it a little
cooler, a trifle moister, and somewhat cleaner than day air with the
result that we all invite it indoors, now, and even go out to meet it.
Once interested in the air, science soon began to take up that
commonplace but baffling phase of it called the weather. Now, of all
matters under the sun the weather was the deepest intrenched in
superstition and hearsay. From the era of Noah it had been made the
subject of more remarks unrelieved by common sense than any other. It was
at once the commonest topic for conversation and the rarest for thought.
Considering the opportunities for study of the weather this conclusion, we
must admit, is more surprising than complimentary to the human race. But
it is so. The fact that science had to face was this: that the weather had
been and remained a tremendous, dimly-recognized factor in our level of
living. So talk about it all must. And science set about finding some easy
fundamental truths to talk instead of the hereditary gossip about
old-fashioned winters or the usual meaningless conversational coin.
Two groups of men had always known a good deal about the weather from
experience: the sailor had to know it to save his life, and the farmer had
to cultivate a weather eye along with his early peas. But the ordinary
business man (and wife), the town-dweller, and even the suburbanite knew
so few of the proven facts that the weather from day to day, from hour to
hour, was a continual puzzle to them. The rain not only fell upon the
just and unjust but it fell unquestioned, or misunderstood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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