Viewing page 52 of 108

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

WEATHER BUREAU "GAPS" AND INADEQUACIES IN OUR SYSTEM OF FEDERAL AIRWAYS*
EDGAR S. GORRELL†

PART I- THE AIRWAY WEATHER SERVICE TODAY
When airplanes began to fly on schedules, weather reporting and forecasting had to be revolutionized.
Most of the changes made have appeared as additions to the Weather Bureau's traditional system, and the extent of their influence on that system has heretofore gone unrealized. This influence has been highly important in improving the quantity and accuracy of information about today's and tomorrow's weather, available to everyone in the United States.
Aviation's special needs stated with the pressing requirement to know the weather, not only here but 300 miles from here, and not merely sometime later today but now. Information previously of value only to the weather forecaster became the immediate need of the direct user, the "ultimate consumer" of the weather service.
The forecaster had needed a record of the current weather only from a sufficient number of sampling points. The aviator needed the information from his starting point, his destination, and the intermediate points over which he was going to fly his plane at a speed of a mile and a half to two miles a minute. With speeds now closer to three miles a minute, the urgency has still further increased.
Teletype circuits and radio facilities for communicating between points along the airways were an early part of the Government's investment in public facilities for air navigation. The Weather Bureau turned every teletype and radio station along the airways into a weather-observing post. It supplied instruments, such as were available, and sent out instructions designed as well as possible to make the teletype and radio operators into embryo weather observers.
Facts, which they must observe and report include, "ceiling," that is the height of the cloud layer above the ground; the sky conditions, that is whether the sky is clear, or decked with scattered or broken clouds, or completely overcast; the "weather" in the
______________________________________________
* An address delivered before the National Aviation Forum, Washington, D.C., February 21, 1939.
† President, Air Transport Association of America.

[176]