Long before the use of radio on shipboard, the location, intensity, and movement of hurricanes over the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf, and along the coasts and between the islands in the West Indies had been judged by careful observations of the wind, sea and sky. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the storm hunters had become quite expert at it. Among the best were the Jesuits in the West Indies and in the Far East. They watched the high clouds moving out in advance of the tropical storm, the sea swells that are stirred up by the big winds and travel rapidly ahead, and, finally, as the storm center drew near, they studied the winds in the outer edges when they began to be felt locally. One of the pioneers in this work in the West Indies was Father Benito Viñes, at Havana. He began giving out warnings as early as 1875 and by the end of the century was an authority on the precursory signs of hurricanes, both for land observers and for men on shipboard. By that time many of the Weather Bureau men along the coasts had become experts and, after the Spanish War, they began work on the islands in the West Indies. Observations from the islands came in by cable and from the American coasts they came by telegraph. In some areas this information served very well, but far from land—in the open Atlantic, Caribbean, or Gulf—there was not much to go on. Along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the last resort before putting up the red flags with black centers was the experienced observer who had an unobstructed view of the open sea. Even with the best of such reports, there was always a question as to whether it was a big storm with its center far out or a small storm with its center close by. This fact, plus the rate of forward motion of the storm, could make a vital difference. A big, slow-moving storm gave plenty of warning but a small, fast-moving one brought destructive winds and tides almost as soon as the warnings could be sent out and the flags hoisted. Aside from these indications, the storm hunters depended heavily on the behavior of tropical storms in different parts of the season. They had average tracks by months, showing how storms had moved both in direction and speed, and much other information on their normal behavior. But all too often hurricanes took an erratic course, and now and then the center of a big one described a loop or a track shaped like a hairpin. A few of the storm hunters thought that some upper air movement—a “steering current”—controlled the hurricane’s path. The most obvious influence of this kind is the general air circulation over the Atlantic—the large anticyclone nearly always centered over the ocean near the Azores but often extending westward to Bermuda or even to the American mainland.