WEBVTT - The Weather Vane 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:24.036 Pushkin. Imagine there's a place in our world where the 0:00:24.116 --> 0:00:33.996 known things go. Calculations, weather maps, old barometer readings, strange 0:00:33.996 --> 0:00:41.956 weather lately right tragic weather, catastrophic weather, Snowmageddon, heat apocalypse. 0:00:42.876 --> 0:00:45.636 It always makes me think of something attributed to Mark Twain. 0:00:46.236 --> 0:00:49.676 Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. 0:00:51.116 --> 0:00:56.516 Better check the forecast tonight a dangerous what your storm 0:00:56.596 --> 0:00:58.956 is bearing down on the East Coast with blizzard warnings 0:00:58.956 --> 0:01:02.596 issued for the New York City area and Boston? Would geez? 0:01:02.636 --> 0:01:04.676 I hope people would be okay. I might as well 0:01:04.716 --> 0:01:06.916 catch up on my reading. I've been going through old 0:01:06.956 --> 0:01:12.196 issues of Poor Richard's Almanac. Let's see seventeen fifty three. 0:01:12.716 --> 0:01:16.036 In the preface, Benjamin Franklin looks back at twenty years 0:01:16.036 --> 0:01:19.116 of publishing his Poor Richard's Almanacs, and it makes this 0:01:19.196 --> 0:01:21.996 pretty corny joke about how no matter what weather he 0:01:22.076 --> 0:01:25.716 predicted day to day, year after year, his prediction was right. 0:01:26.436 --> 0:01:29.956 At least he predicted the right weather. Somewhere in the world. 0:01:31.036 --> 0:01:33.556 In the eighteenth century, no one could really predict the weather, 0:01:33.836 --> 0:01:36.796 not like today. Tens of millions are in the path 0:01:37.036 --> 0:01:39.836 of this nor easter, that could bring record snowfall and 0:01:40.116 --> 0:01:44.556 coastal flooding. Time to Betten down the hatches and then 0:01:44.676 --> 0:01:48.356 escape over the threshold to a radio booth in New 0:01:48.436 --> 0:01:53.676 York during another terrible snowstorm more than half a century ago. 0:01:54.836 --> 0:01:56.676 Ladies and gentlemen, A good morning to you. This is 0:01:56.756 --> 0:01:59.236 John Cameron's ways in the NBC news room in New 0:01:59.316 --> 0:02:01.676 York over to the deal of the storm area. Today, 0:02:01.756 --> 0:02:04.556 the forecast is for better weather, which is encouraging news 0:02:04.596 --> 0:02:07.036 to many. Thousands of people will have the tales of 0:02:07.076 --> 0:02:10.556 this top subject during the broadcast. The Great Blizzard of 0:02:10.636 --> 0:02:13.996 nineteen forty seven hit New York the day after Christmas. 0:02:14.596 --> 0:02:17.116 If you were in its path, you likely lost power 0:02:17.636 --> 0:02:21.076 and couldn't listen to the radio or watch television. Life 0:02:21.076 --> 0:02:25.196 magazine printed photographs of people skiing through the streets. Movie 0:02:25.196 --> 0:02:28.276 theaters ran news ural reports very much in the style 0:02:28.316 --> 0:02:31.316 of the newsural reports from the Second World War, which 0:02:31.316 --> 0:02:35.676 it only just ended. Friday, December twenty six, nineteen forty seven, 0:02:36.036 --> 0:02:38.636 It's a blank white Friday in New York City. As 0:02:38.636 --> 0:02:42.036 a snow plot burst, as it's officially called, dumps two 0:02:42.076 --> 0:02:45.676 inches of snow an hour on the top. I've always 0:02:45.716 --> 0:02:48.516 been fascinated by how much weather reporting has in common 0:02:48.556 --> 0:02:52.156 with war reporting, as if the weather were an enemy 0:02:52.556 --> 0:02:56.516 to be battled, but so formidable that the weather nearly 0:02:56.556 --> 0:03:00.636 always wins. This time, the enemy had conducted a sneak attack. 0:03:01.236 --> 0:03:05.756 New Yorkers were blindsided. As many as thirty thousand cars 0:03:05.756 --> 0:03:07.916 had to be abandoned by their drivers. It was a 0:03:07.996 --> 0:03:11.356 six million dollar object to make New York streets passable again. 0:03:11.436 --> 0:03:14.396 The storm extended from the nation's capital to northern Maine, 0:03:14.436 --> 0:03:16.516 but it was New York and its suburbs that or 0:03:16.636 --> 0:03:19.956 the brunt of the fall. He officially recorded twenty six inches, 0:03:20.316 --> 0:03:25.396 was five more inches than the historic blizzard. For most 0:03:25.436 --> 0:03:27.756 of human history, people would wake up in the morning, 0:03:27.916 --> 0:03:30.116 look up in the sky, have a good idea, a 0:03:30.156 --> 0:03:33.436 reasonable idea about what the day might bring, but no 0:03:33.516 --> 0:03:37.436 idea what tomorrow would bring. Today, I look on my phone. 0:03:37.796 --> 0:03:40.196 I can see the weather anywhere in the world, hour 0:03:40.356 --> 0:03:43.556 by hour, for the next week. I have an oracle 0:03:43.676 --> 0:03:46.916 in my back pocket, a tiny god. It's a kind 0:03:46.956 --> 0:03:50.196 of thing, a form of technology, a type of knowledge 0:03:50.636 --> 0:03:52.316 that I tend to put in a category in my 0:03:52.316 --> 0:03:55.316 head that says, brought to you by NASA or a 0:03:55.316 --> 0:03:58.716 product of the space race, and partly that's true. The 0:03:58.796 --> 0:04:00.956 weather app on my iPhone is a product of war, 0:04:01.556 --> 0:04:06.676 of all the wars of the twentieth century. I'd like 0:04:06.756 --> 0:04:08.676 to know what does it mean that I carry around 0:04:08.676 --> 0:04:11.956 in my back pocket this little instrument of war. What 0:04:12.036 --> 0:04:14.596 does it mean to have at my fingertips the knowledge 0:04:14.636 --> 0:04:17.756 of what weather is going to happen next everywhere? How 0:04:17.756 --> 0:04:20.996 has it changed the world to have this knowledge, to 0:04:21.076 --> 0:04:24.596 take it for granted even and there was one statistic 0:04:24.676 --> 0:04:28.436 that will probably stand ninety nine million tons of snow 0:04:28.636 --> 0:04:35.356 fella New York in sixteen dollars. Welcome to the Last Archive. 0:04:35.676 --> 0:04:37.636 The show about how we know what we know and 0:04:37.716 --> 0:04:39.796 why it seems lately as if we don't know anything 0:04:39.836 --> 0:04:43.676 at all. I'm Jill Lapour. This season is all about 0:04:43.836 --> 0:04:47.796 common knowledge, what everyone knows or thinks they know, knowledge 0:04:47.836 --> 0:04:52.516 people share in common. This episode the weather. Everyone's always 0:04:52.556 --> 0:04:55.276 talking about it, but nobody ever does anything about it, 0:04:57.516 --> 0:05:01.996 or do they. It's a big, messy, uncertain world, looking 0:05:02.076 --> 0:05:04.396 up to the skies, to the heavens and trying to 0:05:04.436 --> 0:05:07.356 read in the clouds signs of what might happen next. 0:05:07.636 --> 0:05:13.316 Snow rain, a beautiful day it's an elemental curiosity. It's 0:05:13.316 --> 0:05:16.036 also an urgent one. You can see why forecasting the 0:05:16.076 --> 0:05:19.556 weather is a lynchpin of wartime planning. The weather can 0:05:19.596 --> 0:05:22.156 determine if you live or die, whether your crops fail, 0:05:22.356 --> 0:05:25.236 your boat sinks, you run out of water, you lose 0:05:25.276 --> 0:05:27.676 your home in a flood. Then there are the more 0:05:27.756 --> 0:05:32.716 ordinary matters Janet an umbrella today. I I love the 0:05:32.796 --> 0:05:36.716 idea that I can know what's coming next. It's a comfort, 0:05:36.996 --> 0:05:40.276 but it's also strange, as if we could find such 0:05:40.316 --> 0:05:45.396 certainty in such an uncertain world. In the US, weather 0:05:45.476 --> 0:05:49.356 records go pretty far back. For centuries, farmers, factory workers, 0:05:49.596 --> 0:05:53.116 all sorts of ordinary people recorded the weather, little jottings 0:05:53.116 --> 0:05:57.316 and diaries. Mostly people also consulted farmers almanacs to look 0:05:57.316 --> 0:06:01.116 for weather predictions. There, something bigger started to happen, though, 0:06:01.316 --> 0:06:05.436 in the eighteen forties, a national data collection project headed 0:06:05.516 --> 0:06:10.636 up by a new national institution, the Smithsonian. I've got 0:06:10.636 --> 0:06:14.476 a graduate student, Adelaide Mandeville, working on a history dissertation 0:06:14.516 --> 0:06:16.756 about all of this, and I called her up and 0:06:16.836 --> 0:06:19.556 she explained to me what the Smithsonian had been trying 0:06:19.556 --> 0:06:23.076 to do and how it depended on the telegraph system. 0:06:23.716 --> 0:06:28.316 Working with the telegraph companies, they enlist one hundred and 0:06:28.356 --> 0:06:32.396 fifty volunteers in the first year to start sending in 0:06:32.796 --> 0:06:37.076 their local weather observations, and then the Smithsonian takes all 0:06:37.116 --> 0:06:41.676 of that and maps it, and then eighteen seventy I 0:06:41.716 --> 0:06:47.676 think they make the first national weather agency. So that's 0:06:47.676 --> 0:06:51.636 when it becomes a federal project. For a long time, 0:06:51.676 --> 0:06:55.316 that project relied on hundreds, even thousands of volunteers who 0:06:55.356 --> 0:06:59.636 sent in their local weather observations. And as one meteorologist 0:06:59.636 --> 0:07:03.276 said in eighteen seventy nine, anyone could do it. There 0:07:03.356 --> 0:07:06.156 is one science which is within the grasp of every mine, 0:07:06.236 --> 0:07:09.556 and which to be successfully cultivated requires no pre operation, 0:07:10.476 --> 0:07:13.716 the science of rain and fine weather, but which now 0:07:13.716 --> 0:07:18.916 received the higher title of meteorology. By the end of 0:07:18.916 --> 0:07:23.636 the nineteenth century, experts were taking over. Eventually, the work 0:07:23.636 --> 0:07:26.996 of predicting the weather moved to the US Signal Service, 0:07:27.076 --> 0:07:31.676 and then in eighteen ninety one Congress created the Weather Bureau. 0:07:31.836 --> 0:07:34.916 It was a division of the Department of Agriculture. The 0:07:34.996 --> 0:07:37.716 chief of this new Weather Bureau, he didn't just oversee 0:07:37.716 --> 0:07:40.676 the collection of weather records. He was supposed to forecast 0:07:40.836 --> 0:07:44.916 storms and droughts and floods, anything that would affect agriculture 0:07:45.116 --> 0:07:48.436 or industry or commerce. The whole scheme had a kind 0:07:48.476 --> 0:07:51.756 of citizen science quality to it. The Weather Bureau wanted 0:07:51.796 --> 0:07:55.596 to make meteorology common knowledge, to teach people about the 0:07:55.676 --> 0:07:59.756 latest instruments. It installed little weather kiosks in twenty nine 0:07:59.796 --> 0:08:03.276 cities out their own city sidewalks. There were these boxes 0:08:03.316 --> 0:08:07.396 with maps and charts, thermometers and barometers. What the Weather 0:08:07.396 --> 0:08:11.876 beer really wanted was newspapers to print weather maps, but 0:08:11.996 --> 0:08:15.396 before that happened, the weather report went out in a 0:08:15.436 --> 0:08:19.676 different way. As Adelaide Manville explained to me, the post 0:08:19.796 --> 0:08:23.956 office in the early twentieth century, they were responsible for 0:08:24.116 --> 0:08:28.276 delivering weather forecasts with the mail, but there was an 0:08:28.316 --> 0:08:31.476 issue because they would go out at seven am, that's 0:08:31.516 --> 0:08:34.596 when the mail was delivered, and the forecast. Each day, 0:08:35.156 --> 0:08:37.196 new information came in at ten am, so it was 0:08:37.236 --> 0:08:40.036 always a little delayed, and the weather forecasters sort of 0:08:40.116 --> 0:08:43.436 got a reputation for not being super accurate. But then 0:08:43.476 --> 0:08:46.516 they had these, you know, really really helpful and important 0:08:46.596 --> 0:08:50.116 forecasts where they warned towns that there was going to 0:08:50.156 --> 0:08:52.556 be a huge flood or hurricane and people were able 0:08:52.596 --> 0:08:56.996 to evacuate then once radio started in the nineteen twenties, 0:08:57.516 --> 0:09:01.836 you could hear the weather forecast over the wireless. We'll 0:09:01.916 --> 0:09:14.636 give you that everywhether we put forecasting had by now 0:09:14.756 --> 0:09:17.796 gotten more accurate than it had ever been before. That's 0:09:17.836 --> 0:09:20.916 because of advances made just before the First World War, 0:09:21.236 --> 0:09:25.476 when a Norwegian meteorologist recorded the weather across Europe. Then 0:09:25.556 --> 0:09:29.276 during the war, his son, working for the military, discovered 0:09:29.276 --> 0:09:31.676 the nature of the movement of masses of cold and 0:09:31.756 --> 0:09:36.796 warm air. He called these fronts like battlefronts, except the weather. 0:09:38.116 --> 0:09:41.636 An English mathematician also involved in the war effort, used 0:09:41.676 --> 0:09:45.516 their data and those ideas to devise a mathematical model 0:09:45.716 --> 0:09:50.476 to predict the weather. Unfortunately it didn't work. Still, the 0:09:50.516 --> 0:09:52.916 idea too cold, that there should be a model, and 0:09:52.956 --> 0:09:55.596 that if only you could do the calculations fast enough, 0:09:55.996 --> 0:09:58.836 you could predict the weather. So right, Doing that got 0:09:58.836 --> 0:10:03.076 a lot easier after computers were invented, and here's the 0:10:03.116 --> 0:10:08.116 latest weather report. Nothing advances science like war. During the 0:10:08.196 --> 0:10:12.036 Second World War, those mathematical models got better and better, 0:10:12.436 --> 0:10:14.396 and by the end of the war you could use 0:10:14.436 --> 0:10:18.396 computers to run those calculations, so finally you could make 0:10:18.396 --> 0:10:21.396 your predictions faster than the speed of weather. If you 0:10:21.436 --> 0:10:24.076 could get ahead of the storm, you could get ahead 0:10:24.076 --> 0:10:31.196 of the enemy. Weather forecasting becomes critical to military strategy 0:10:31.396 --> 0:10:34.756 during the war, and they're developing these new technologies to 0:10:34.996 --> 0:10:38.156 syst them in doing that, so like radar and these 0:10:38.196 --> 0:10:44.516 aircraft controls and more extensive data collection systems and all 0:10:44.596 --> 0:10:48.796 that does make them better at forecasting. By nineteen forty seven, 0:10:49.116 --> 0:10:52.556 Americans had gotten used to the idea that, especially if 0:10:52.596 --> 0:10:55.556 there were a really big storm coming, they'd know it 0:10:55.676 --> 0:10:59.716 in advance. Nearly twenty six inchines have fallen a record 0:10:59.836 --> 0:11:02.956 unequal in the analyst of the Weather Bureau. But really 0:11:03.036 --> 0:11:05.276 it wasn't the scale of that storm that was the 0:11:05.396 --> 0:11:09.596 strangest thing about it. The strangest thing about it was 0:11:09.636 --> 0:11:13.036 that it was so unexpected. When you wake up in 0:11:13.116 --> 0:11:14.956 the morning and you open up an eye, if you 0:11:15.036 --> 0:11:16.916 turn on the mark and you look through the sky 0:11:17.116 --> 0:11:19.076 and won the weather who he is a weather or 0:11:19.236 --> 0:11:23.436 dry who knows the weather man? And here's the latest 0:11:23.436 --> 0:11:30.356 weather report? Extreme cold temperature below zero. In the nineteen fifties, 0:11:30.556 --> 0:11:34.116 when Americans started buying televisions and real numbers, they could 0:11:34.116 --> 0:11:37.956 flip a switch and hear a forecast, sometimes a goofy one. 0:11:38.356 --> 0:11:41.116 A lot of early TV forecasts came in the form 0:11:41.156 --> 0:11:45.916 of cartoons. Some of them involved puppets. One was sponsored 0:11:45.956 --> 0:11:50.476 by Botany Neckties and featured a little wooly lamb. No 0:11:50.636 --> 0:11:53.516 recordings of the song exists, so we found the lyrics 0:11:53.796 --> 0:11:56.996 and made our own. It's cold, it's rain, it's fair, 0:11:57.396 --> 0:12:02.116 it's all mixed up together. But I, as Botany's little lamp, 0:12:02.516 --> 0:12:09.436 predict tomorrow's weather. I love how silly these early weather 0:12:09.476 --> 0:12:13.556 reports were. But this goofiness didn't last long. Pretty quickly, 0:12:13.556 --> 0:12:16.956 in those post war years, television weather forecasting left lambs 0:12:16.996 --> 0:12:20.436 behind and settled into the style we still have today. 0:12:22.236 --> 0:12:25.316 Weather today, Montana in a real state of deep breeze, 0:12:25.316 --> 0:12:28.436 about forty eight degrees near Helena, stormy along the Gulf 0:12:28.436 --> 0:12:31.796 of Mexico and Texas, A sober looking fellow in a 0:12:31.876 --> 0:12:37.276 suit and tie, part sportscaster, part scientist. Generally, however, here 0:12:37.276 --> 0:12:40.396 in New York and alt in Chicago, something resembling springtime. 0:12:40.516 --> 0:12:43.636 Fifty eighth degrees here in New York this afternoon. It's 0:12:43.876 --> 0:12:46.316 really a pretty big country after all, lots of weather. 0:12:47.956 --> 0:12:51.356 The buttoned up weatherman and his straight up forecast. This 0:12:51.436 --> 0:12:54.476 was a wartime offshoot products of the Army in the Navy. 0:12:54.836 --> 0:12:58.316 The earliest national television weather forecast was made by Fellow 0:12:58.356 --> 0:13:01.076 who had had training in meteorology during the war. A 0:13:01.116 --> 0:13:03.876 lot of soldiers and sailors had gotten that kind of training. 0:13:04.196 --> 0:13:06.916 And when you look at it even today, a modern 0:13:06.916 --> 0:13:11.196 weather report, the map, the pointer, the symbols, the presentation, 0:13:11.676 --> 0:13:15.236 it's like a military briefing. Right, let me get the 0:13:15.356 --> 0:13:17.836 weather Bureau here, we said to the brother James, are there. 0:13:18.636 --> 0:13:21.756 In nineteen fifty two, NBC launched The Today Show. That's 0:13:21.756 --> 0:13:23.996 weather forecast. Do you understand? Right in the Weather Bureau 0:13:24.076 --> 0:13:26.876 where they make the stuff? And already for you. Go ahead, Jim, 0:13:26.876 --> 0:13:29.356 I'll put it on a map. The Today Show's anchor, 0:13:29.516 --> 0:13:32.676 Dave Garroway in suit and bow tie. He's on the 0:13:32.716 --> 0:13:35.036 phone with a guy from the Weather Bureau. He's in 0:13:35.076 --> 0:13:37.436 a studio kitted out with all kinds of Jim crackery, 0:13:37.596 --> 0:13:40.836 a giant telephone, a microphone the size of a broomstick 0:13:40.916 --> 0:13:44.516 hanging down his front, a bank of blinking television monitors, 0:13:44.916 --> 0:13:49.036 very high tech, nineteen fifty style. But then the telephone 0:13:49.036 --> 0:13:51.036 in one hand, he's got a piece of chalk in 0:13:51.116 --> 0:13:53.476 his other hand, and he starts writing the weather on 0:13:53.516 --> 0:13:56.356 a big chalkboard with a map of the country drawn 0:13:56.396 --> 0:14:02.876 on it. Ar it turns to rain in Pennsylvania about 0:14:02.996 --> 0:14:08.356 thirty two up here, crazing dribble. He's not God, this 0:14:08.436 --> 0:14:11.316 guy here, he is every morning telling you what your 0:14:11.396 --> 0:14:13.836 day will be like, and for the most part, earning 0:14:13.876 --> 0:14:17.316 your trust. I think, having lived through some of this era, 0:14:17.836 --> 0:14:20.956 there was also something so seemingly simple about it. You 0:14:20.996 --> 0:14:23.036 get the weather report in the morning, you put on 0:14:23.076 --> 0:14:26.116 your wind breaker, you had out expecting rain, You get 0:14:26.156 --> 0:14:28.756 on with your day. There was a Cold War going on, 0:14:29.156 --> 0:14:31.796 the world might end in a blink an atomic bomb, 0:14:31.876 --> 0:14:34.356 the end of life on Earth. But hey, you knew 0:14:34.436 --> 0:14:36.556 enough at least that you needed a wind breaker. Today. 0:14:37.156 --> 0:14:39.116 I want to know your forecast is very good, because 0:14:39.116 --> 0:14:42.076 it's raining right here in New York. All those long 0:14:42.156 --> 0:14:44.396 years of the Cold War, though, the nineteen fifties, the 0:14:44.476 --> 0:14:48.516 nineteen sixties, there was something else going on. For one thing, 0:14:48.836 --> 0:14:53.556 the weather forecasting was pretty good, reliable, useful, but it 0:14:53.636 --> 0:14:58.196 had stopped getting much better each war. The First World War, 0:14:58.356 --> 0:15:01.316 the Second World War, the Cold War had advanced the 0:15:01.396 --> 0:15:07.076 science of meteorology, but whether as folklore proverbs that goofiness 0:15:07.116 --> 0:15:10.116 that started with poor Richard's Almanac went down to the 0:15:10.156 --> 0:15:13.036 singing lamb that was still around two in a way. 0:15:13.396 --> 0:15:16.036 You can see it. In one little town in America. 0:15:16.196 --> 0:15:21.476 In nineteen seventy, the morning a long time once again 0:15:21.596 --> 0:15:26.676 for the KRSBO got Report, the official for Rosebery. Yes 0:15:27.036 --> 0:15:30.876 you heard that right, the Mount Nebo Goat Report. In 0:15:30.956 --> 0:15:34.836 a city of Rosberg, Oregon. They went old school. The 0:15:34.916 --> 0:15:38.156 local news started issuing forecasts by reporting on the position 0:15:38.196 --> 0:15:40.956 of a herd of goats up on a mountain outside 0:15:40.996 --> 0:15:44.156 town Mount Nebo. And I know this sounds crazy, but 0:15:44.356 --> 0:15:47.476 you really can use sheep and goats to predict the weather. 0:15:47.996 --> 0:15:52.236 They're pretty accurate. There's no end of proverbs about this phenomenon. 0:15:53.156 --> 0:15:56.556 When sheep gather in a huddle, tomorrow will have a puddle. 0:15:57.356 --> 0:16:03.716 That's true. And so the KRSB Mount Nebo Goat reports 0:16:03.756 --> 0:16:06.276 game this morning at about six thirty am. Man at 0:16:06.276 --> 0:16:09.396 the moment, we have someone scattered goats under an intenthi 0:16:09.676 --> 0:16:13.316 go to pressure system. Goats arranging this morning about the 0:16:13.356 --> 0:16:16.876 mid mountain three quarters of the way upound people. Thus 0:16:16.996 --> 0:16:19.436 we will have a beautiful Juan morning. Once you get 0:16:21.356 --> 0:16:23.196 what I think is going on here is a kind 0:16:23.236 --> 0:16:26.476 of back to nature vibe. But there's something else here too, 0:16:26.716 --> 0:16:29.476 an anti war vibe, the idea that maybe the weather 0:16:29.556 --> 0:16:32.236 isn't brought to you by the military, Maybe the weather 0:16:32.356 --> 0:16:34.916 isn't the enemy. Maybe the weather could also just be 0:16:34.996 --> 0:16:38.836 goats up on a hill. Then too, there's a sense 0:16:38.876 --> 0:16:42.636 here of the chaos of climate. By the nineteen seventies, 0:16:42.956 --> 0:16:46.516 meteorologists we're talking about the butterfly effect, the idea that 0:16:46.596 --> 0:16:49.236 a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the 0:16:49.236 --> 0:16:52.436 world could have an effect on a weather system on 0:16:52.476 --> 0:16:55.596 the other side of the world. That wasn't really a 0:16:55.636 --> 0:16:58.276 new idea in the nineteen seventies. It had first appeared 0:16:58.276 --> 0:17:01.996 in a meteorology journal in nineteen eighteen during the First 0:17:02.036 --> 0:17:05.596 World War, about a different insect, a grasshopper in Idaho, 0:17:05.716 --> 0:17:09.036 might conceivably initiate a storm movement which would sweep across 0:17:09.196 --> 0:17:13.916 the continent and destroy New York City. It was a 0:17:14.036 --> 0:17:17.196 very scary thought. It got much scarier somehow in the 0:17:17.276 --> 0:17:20.916 nineteen seventies, in the middle of the Vietnam War. The 0:17:20.996 --> 0:17:25.156 weather is chaos. It's complicated, so formidably intricate. A set 0:17:25.156 --> 0:17:30.076 of innumerable forces, intersecting and infinite ways. The system can 0:17:30.156 --> 0:17:34.556 never be reduced to any mathematical model, not perfectly anyway. 0:17:35.356 --> 0:17:38.196 But what if we didn't have to understand all that complexity. 0:17:38.556 --> 0:17:41.276 What if instead of trying to model or predict the weather, 0:17:41.596 --> 0:17:47.996 we could just control it. That story after the break. 0:17:57.796 --> 0:18:01.396 This is an airport weather station here with our charts 0:18:01.436 --> 0:18:05.516 and their instruments and trying to predict tomorrow's weather. Quite 0:18:05.556 --> 0:18:12.396 often they succeed. In nineteen fifty eight, CBS News reported 0:18:12.516 --> 0:18:16.436 on the latest research in the field of meteorology. The 0:18:16.476 --> 0:18:19.196 fact is that we don't know very much about the 0:18:19.236 --> 0:18:22.476 forces that create the weather. Therefore we can always predict 0:18:22.516 --> 0:18:26.396 without proceed Consider some of the things we don't know. 0:18:28.076 --> 0:18:31.316 Consider this cloud. The Cold War, the age of the 0:18:31.316 --> 0:18:35.556 atomic bomb, had given rise to a revolution and atmospheric sciences, 0:18:36.116 --> 0:18:39.036 and still no one really understood the workings of weather. 0:18:39.276 --> 0:18:43.916 What exactly produces high winds, a hurricane, a tornado, a blizzard? 0:18:44.596 --> 0:18:46.716 Was it a butterfly on the other side of the world? 0:18:47.636 --> 0:18:50.876 What causes rain? How to clouds form? At the time, 0:18:51.156 --> 0:18:53.396 the field was on the verge of a major breakthrough 0:18:53.836 --> 0:18:58.476 in the work of a scientist named Joanne Malchus. CBS 0:18:58.516 --> 0:19:01.316 featured her research in its look at the Latest goings 0:19:01.356 --> 0:19:05.956 on in Meteorology. Doctor Maltho was studying a tiny but 0:19:06.236 --> 0:19:12.116 very important part of weather, a cloud. Joanne Melchis, better 0:19:12.156 --> 0:19:15.956 known by a later married name, Joanne Simpson, was the 0:19:15.996 --> 0:19:18.796 first woman in the United States to earn a PhD 0:19:18.956 --> 0:19:22.116 in meteorology. Her whole career came out of the Second 0:19:22.116 --> 0:19:27.436 World War. She was always interested in flying and sailing 0:19:27.636 --> 0:19:30.436 and math, but didn't really have an interest in science 0:19:30.516 --> 0:19:33.516 until she went to University of Chicago. And then she 0:19:33.556 --> 0:19:36.676 describes her interest in meteorology as an accident of World 0:19:36.756 --> 0:19:40.116 War Two. And she starts college in nineteen forty and 0:19:40.196 --> 0:19:45.436 then Pearl Harbor happens, and she says, her whole worlds 0:19:45.476 --> 0:19:48.276 in flames, and she really wants to contribute to the 0:19:48.276 --> 0:19:52.436 war effort. That's Adelaide Mandeville again. Simpson's father had been 0:19:52.436 --> 0:19:56.716 a reporter covering aviation, her mother a birth control activist. 0:19:57.516 --> 0:20:01.756 Her parents won't let her join the military and say, 0:20:01.796 --> 0:20:04.156 you have to stay in college, and so she finds 0:20:04.196 --> 0:20:08.876 this aviation training program World War two training program at 0:20:09.196 --> 0:20:14.836 Verst of Chicago that was started by this meteorologist named 0:20:15.036 --> 0:20:20.596 Carl Gustaf Rosby, who many people consider like the greatest 0:20:20.676 --> 0:20:24.396 meteorologists of the twentieth century. If you've ever flown on 0:20:24.436 --> 0:20:27.996 an airplane, you can think Carl Gustaf Rosby. He was 0:20:28.116 --> 0:20:31.516 key in identifying the jet stream. He explained how atmospheric 0:20:31.596 --> 0:20:35.516 circulation of the weather works like waves. He was Simpson's advisor. 0:20:35.956 --> 0:20:39.676 He was a great meteorologist. Apparently he was not a 0:20:39.676 --> 0:20:43.676 great person. He was really dismissive of her and her work. 0:20:43.756 --> 0:20:47.516 He's like, clouds are completely insignificant. They just don't matter 0:20:47.836 --> 0:20:51.836 you as a girl, and clouds, as passive and insignificant 0:20:51.916 --> 0:20:58.756 are a perfect match. She's like, okay, sir, and moves 0:20:58.796 --> 0:21:00.876 on to a new advisor and continues working on it. 0:21:01.356 --> 0:21:04.996 In spite of that, Simpson persevered. She finished her dissertation 0:21:05.116 --> 0:21:09.076 in nineteen forty nine. She saw something few other meteorologies 0:21:09.556 --> 0:21:13.876 had seen. That clouds weren't insignificant, and that they were 0:21:13.876 --> 0:21:16.756 important to whether in all kinds of ways, that they 0:21:16.796 --> 0:21:20.916 were worth investigating. It's almost as though, as a person 0:21:20.956 --> 0:21:23.996 whose own power had been invisible to a lot of people, 0:21:24.116 --> 0:21:28.116 including her adviser, she could see the power and something 0:21:28.156 --> 0:21:34.756 that looked like fluff. Here's Simpson in that nineteen fifty 0:21:34.756 --> 0:21:38.396 eight CBS news story. We could understand what's happening in 0:21:38.436 --> 0:21:41.636 this coffee cup. We could begin to learn about clouds. 0:21:42.556 --> 0:21:46.716 There's heat and moisture in the coffee cup. Because Hattie arises, 0:21:46.796 --> 0:21:50.556 we find motions. When I first watched this interview with Simpson, 0:21:50.916 --> 0:21:53.516 it drove me crazy that this important scientist has to 0:21:53.556 --> 0:21:56.996 introduce an idea using a coffee mug. I guess because 0:21:56.996 --> 0:21:59.396 she's a woman. But then it turns out it's a 0:21:59.436 --> 0:22:02.916 really good explanation. The steam coming up from the cup 0:22:02.996 --> 0:22:05.596 is water vapor, which is being condensed out into a 0:22:05.676 --> 0:22:09.836 lot of tiny, little liquid water droplets. Something very similar 0:22:09.836 --> 0:22:13.756 to this is happening over the tropical ocean. Simpson spent 0:22:13.836 --> 0:22:16.436 much of her career of flying through clouds and airplanes 0:22:16.476 --> 0:22:20.996 with cameras strapped to the nose, recording movements and taking measurements. 0:22:22.796 --> 0:22:26.516 There's the marine meteorologist. I began to wonder about clouds. 0:22:26.516 --> 0:22:29.756 How to clouds grow? Where do they get the energy 0:22:29.756 --> 0:22:33.276 to fade on? To find out, we have to go 0:22:33.316 --> 0:22:36.996 to the places where the clouds are. We have to 0:22:37.076 --> 0:22:40.716 chase after them in the sky. So she's up there 0:22:40.956 --> 0:22:46.076 in airplanes, chasing clouds, making films, analyzing those films frame 0:22:46.156 --> 0:22:49.596 by frame, and building a mathematical model of the behavior 0:22:49.596 --> 0:22:54.396 of clouds. To do all those things she needs was 0:22:54.436 --> 0:22:57.716 at the time really expensive technology, and the best way 0:22:57.716 --> 0:23:00.556 to get access to that technology was through the military, 0:23:00.676 --> 0:23:03.636 which had long had a huge interest in understanding and 0:23:03.756 --> 0:23:06.876 predicting the weather. By the nineteen fifties, at the beginning 0:23:06.916 --> 0:23:09.676 of the Cold War, what the US military would really 0:23:09.716 --> 0:23:12.316 really like is to be able to control the weather. 0:23:12.996 --> 0:23:16.396 This is what Adelaide Manville's research is all about. Earlier 0:23:16.436 --> 0:23:20.836 scientists had wanted to understand things. Cold War era scientists 0:23:21.116 --> 0:23:25.796 wanted to control things mind control, riot control, pain control, 0:23:26.316 --> 0:23:30.836 weather control. We can fully harness nature, and so you know, 0:23:30.836 --> 0:23:36.396 we're one step closer to being able to move clouds 0:23:36.516 --> 0:23:39.796 and make it rain, and turn a hurricane in a 0:23:39.836 --> 0:23:44.716 different direction, mitigate lightning so forest fires don't happen. They 0:23:44.716 --> 0:23:48.716 start coming up with all these ideas turning deserts into gardens, 0:23:49.196 --> 0:23:52.116 and you know why not, because meanwhile, a bunch of 0:23:52.156 --> 0:23:56.396 other wartime technologies we're making it possible to control the weather. 0:23:56.796 --> 0:24:01.436 Indoors mposures everywhere are today benefiting by weather made to 0:24:01.636 --> 0:24:05.276 order by carrier. Instead of traveling away from business and 0:24:05.356 --> 0:24:08.156 home to seek relief, you can obtain the same comfort 0:24:08.236 --> 0:24:11.156 right in your own home moral office through air conditioning. 0:24:11.796 --> 0:24:14.476 So we can control the weather inside. Wouldn't it be 0:24:14.556 --> 0:24:16.596 wonderful if you could just touch a button and fill 0:24:16.636 --> 0:24:19.876 your home with warm spring sunlight. Now you can have 0:24:19.996 --> 0:24:24.436 electric heating, the next best thing to sunshine. Next we'll 0:24:24.436 --> 0:24:29.196 control the weather outside air conditioning, electric heating indoor weather 0:24:29.236 --> 0:24:33.516 control for the outdoors. The equivalent was a discovery made 0:24:33.516 --> 0:24:37.116 in nineteen forty six by three scientists a general electric 0:24:37.636 --> 0:24:41.436 They called it cloud seating, dropping dry ice from airplanes 0:24:41.436 --> 0:24:46.676 onto clouds to make them rain weather to order. Cloud 0:24:46.716 --> 0:24:52.676 seating men completely takes off and just becomes this national obsession. 0:24:53.276 --> 0:24:56.916 A lot of veterans from the war who have learned 0:24:56.996 --> 0:25:00.196 to fly and have a general sense of weather patterns. 0:25:00.596 --> 0:25:05.196 They start doing it and selling their services to farmers 0:25:05.196 --> 0:25:10.356 who are facing drought, to mayors who you need to 0:25:10.396 --> 0:25:16.876 refill their public water supply, to Native American tribes who 0:25:16.996 --> 0:25:22.316 have done their annual rainmaking ceremonies and didn't work that year, 0:25:22.356 --> 0:25:25.676 and they hire these rainmakers. Then it tumbles into the 0:25:25.676 --> 0:25:31.076 Cold War period and just explodes. Suddenly. The idea of 0:25:31.116 --> 0:25:34.996 controlling the weather seems so promising. You can force clouds 0:25:35.036 --> 0:25:37.756 to rain. You can't really control how much or what 0:25:37.836 --> 0:25:40.476 the consequences will be, but in a crude way, it 0:25:40.516 --> 0:25:45.036 does work. In nineteen fifty one, Congress debated the Weather 0:25:45.236 --> 0:25:51.476 Modification Act, providing for equitable distribution of precipitation among the states. 0:25:52.236 --> 0:25:56.556 Think about that for a minute. The confidence. We are 0:25:56.636 --> 0:26:02.956 talking about drafting legislation to ensure equal rainfall between the states, 0:26:03.956 --> 0:26:08.276