On Top of It, Sort Of
Feb. 9, 1870: Feds Get on Top of the Weather
It had been obvious for centuries that weather in North America generally moves from west to east, or southwest to northeast. But other than looking upwind, that knowledge was little help in predicting the weather until you could move weather reports downwind faster than the weather itself was moving.
The telegraph finally made that possible. The Smithsonian Institution in 1849 began supplying weather instruments to telegraph companies. Volunteer observers submitted observations to the Smithsonian, which tracked the movement of storms across the country. Several states soon established their own weather services to gather data.
Knowledge is power, but it doesn’t prevent mother nature from kicking our ass, as Snowmageddapocalypse 2010 has shown. Though we can at least try and prepare for how hard she’s going to kick it.
I didn’t know how many of them it was going to take to kick my ass, but I knew how many they was going to use. Ron White
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Comment from Uncle Al
Time: February 10, 2010, 1:16 pm
6-9 February 1999, a storm dumped 168 inches (14 ft.) of snow at Sugar Bowl Ski Resort (near Donner Pass, ). The trick is to keep it in the mountains where it doesn’t bother anybody. Has Washington, DC’s dusting slowed passage of heinous anti-Global Warming legislation? If terrorists had any brains at all they would strike while bureacrats were kept away from their pleasure dome offices.