Storm

by George R. Stewart

  “That old fellow was around again when I was taking observations. He gets in the way quite a bit. He says it’s going to rain—he knows. Maybe we’d better take him back on the staff.”

  It was funny the way when you started talking about personalities, other people gathered round. Now Whitey and Mr. Ragan were standing right there.

  “Hn-n?” said the Chief. “The Old Master! That’s what Whitey calls him. Well, he was a good forecaster, one of the best, for his time.”

  “Good forecasting demands good data and good theory,” said the J. M., quoting a professor’s lecture. “They didn’t have either, fifty years ago; but they may have been good guessers, and their wording was always vague.”

  “I met him down below,” said the Chief. “He told me about the rain too. Of course, he’s right—as long as he doesn’t mention any time-limit. It’s always going to rain. What they say about the barometer—the only time you can believe a barometer is when it reads CHANGE; the weather is always sure to change.”

  He moved off, but Whitey and Mr. Ragan remained.

  “The Old Master is all right,” said Whitey belligerently.

  “He’s nuts!” said the J. M., not mincing words now that the Chief was gone. “He’s got a light in his eye. Why, this morning on that little rickety platform on the roof I watched out. He might push somebody off!”

  “Nuts yourself! He’s past ninety, and you’re a good strong kid. You sure must be easy to scare.”

  “He’s a bore too. He told me about Grant’s inauguration again.”

  “All right, we’ve all heard that story pretty often too. But when I get to be as old as the Old Master I’ll probably tell how we predicted forty days and forty nights of rain for Noah’s flood—right here in this office.”

  As Whitey talked, Mr. Ragan stood nodding his head solemnly. But the J. M. turned back to his map, pointedly, dismissing them and the controversy.

  Nevertheless, even as he put the final touches upon the unquestioning lines of his isobars, Whitey and the others seemed to stare at him from the map. They were jealous of him, he reasoned—of his training. Even the Chief must be; the Chief hardly knew enough mathematics to figure theta-e. And Whitey would never rise higher than Observer; he had tried the Civil Service examination three times and always failed the mathematical part. Mr. Ragan had been a promising youngster once—had even published an article on cyclone tracks; but he had died above the ears about 1915, and been a routine worker ever since.

  Yet the J. M. was not too well pleased with himself either. He knew that he was a good meteorologist, but he wanted also to have companionship. He was in a strange city, and lonely. But he always seemed to be giving the cold shoulder to the boys in the office. He knew their nickname for him—the Baby Chief. The Chief part he liked; but the other word gave the whole nickname too ironic a tinge.

  The phone rang. He answered it, and listened to the question put by a raucous female voice. He almost winced; and he grimaced as he answered. “Yes, madam,” he said, trying to maintain professional courtesy in his voice and yet make it vibrate with deepest irony. “The forecast is for fair weather; I’m sure that you will be quite safe in hanging your washing outside.”

  He turned back to his map in irritation. Even if you put in an automatic telephone system to answer anyone who dialed Weather-1212, still people called up with petty questions. He wished suddenly that he had taken the air-line job when he had the chance.

  Between earth and stratosphere the storms moved eastward, and he was trained to plot their courses. But he had to answer questions about hanging out the diapers—he was sure it was diapers!

  He pulled open his drawer, and saw the well-worn leather case containing his slide-rule. Reflectively rubbing a finger-tip across it, he noticed that he left a track in a faint film of dust.

  8

  Over a large region of the ocean near the Hawaiian Islands a long calm had rested. Through a cloudless atmosphere the tropical sun beat down upon the water. The air grew warmer and warmer, and day after day absorbed moisture from the surface of the ocean. This water-vapor, even without becoming visible as cloud, was able to intercept much energy from the sun’s rays, and thus the humid air grew warm even at high levels.

  The passengers of a liner traversing the region declared themselves on the verge of heat-prostration. They lay in deck-chairs, and sipped constantly at tall glasses of iced drinks. On the outsides of these glasses water at once formed in a film, and then quickly in large drops which trickled down until the glasses stood in puddles on the table. The passengers frequently expressed surprise that such weather did not relieve itself in a shower, not realizing that the upper air also was sufficiently warm to prevent the sudden up-burst of heated surface air which would make possible a thunderstorm.

  In an area a thousand miles long and five hundred miles broad, above an ocean which was smooth to the suggestion of oiliness, the air nowhere offered any zone of quick transition in temperature and moisture. Warm and languid, soppy with tepid water as a wet sponge, far and wide the air lay quiescent.

  9

  After half-past eight the rush-hour in the restaurant was over. Jen got away from her cashier’s booth to put the call through to San Francisco.

  “Hello, Dot, hello. This is Jen, Jen—your sister Jen.”

  Dot expressed surprise, pleasure, and anxiety, as one may when receiving an unexpected long-distance call. Jen cut her short, because the tolls would be running up.

  “Sure, I’m in Reno—as usual; and I’m fine. And say, I got it fixed up to come down and stay with you Saturday night and Sunday, if it suits. I got a boy-friend driving me down—get to your house maybe around midnight—leave late on Sunday. All right?”

  Dot expressed delight at the proposed visit, and then the usual married-sister’s doubt about such runnings-around with a boy-friend. What if the car broke down? And who was he? She got the usual answers:

  “But I’m often out till after midnight around here, and you wouldn’t think anything of that. He’s just a fellow I know—name’s Max Arnim. But, say, the time on this call is running up. Thanks, and I’ll see you then. ’Member me to Ed and the kids.”

  Jen went back to her place at the cashier’s booth, and the proprietress eyed her approvingly. Jen kept her accounts straight, and as to looks she was just about right. She had a rounded little figure, and her light-brown hair had a touch of red in it. Otherwise she was just nice-looking, pretty maybe, not beautiful. Older men liked to pass a word with her, but the younger fellows didn’t hang around too much trying to date her up. In a wide-open town like Reno you had to watch things like that if you were running a respectable place.

  10

  Over all the top of the world rested unbroken darkness like a cap. Through that polar night the flow of heat off into outer space was like the steady drain of blood from an open wound. As the air thus grew colder and colder, it shrank toward the surface of the earth, and to fill its place more air flowed in at the upper levels. Upon every square mile of snow-covered land and frozen sea thus rested hourly a heavier weight of air.

  Until two days previous this accumulation had been relieved by a great flow of cold air southward from Siberia into China. But since that time a series of storms had developed, and by their interlocked winds had blocked off this flow. All China now had mild temperature.

  If the earth had not been revolving, if it had presented no contrast of sea and land, or even if there had been no mountains, the frigid air might merely have moved out in all directions from the pole, pushing beneath the warmer air in somewhat orderly fashion, as ink spilled upon a blotter seeps out to form an ever larger circle. But actually the cordon of storms surrounded the polar air, holding it back by the force of their winds as a line of police, now jostled back a little, now pushing forward, restrains an angry crowd. In Greenland, in Alaska, and in Scandinavia, high mountains also were
barriers. But elsewhere, here and there, the line of the polar front bulged southward, as the crowd pushes forward against the police-line, not everywhere, but at spots where those who are boldest or angriest, most wronged or most desperate, whisper to one another and make ready for the sudden push.

  Or, as a momentarily defeated army driven within a fortress daily restoring its morale and knowing itself too strong for the besiegers begins to renew the battle, so the polar air pushed out southward, now here, now there, feeling for weaknesses. Blocked in China, it thrust down the open ocean-corridor between Norway and Greenland; but a wide-spreading storm moving swiftly out from New England across the Gulf of St. Lawrence brought rain and snow to the mid-Atlantic and checked that sally. So the polar air pushed elsewhere, at every point where the mountain barrier was broken or the storms seemed weaker—into the broad arctic plain of Canada, at Bering Strait, under the lee of the Ural Mountains.

  •

  A fur-trader upon Victoria Island in the Arctic Archipelago, stepping from his cabin into the shadowless daylong twilight, felt a change of weather. He had long ago stopped bothering with the thermometer, but from experience he knew that the customary twenty or thirty below zero had yielded to something far colder. He spat experimentally, and the spittle crackled as it struck the ice-covered ground; that meant about fifty below. It was much too cold for snowflakes to form, but a few tiny spicules and ice-needles settled upon the fur of his sleeve, as the falling temperature squeezed from the already dry air some last vestiges of moisture. A steady breeze moved from the northeast. Along the lines of his cheek-bones above his thick beard, already he felt a numbness. The dog which had followed him from the cabin whimpered a little. “Softy!” said the trader; but he recognized the warning, and went back into the cabin. He brushed from his beard the frost which had formed from his breathing. Then he filled the tea-kettle, knowing that the dry air, when warmed inside the cabin, would suck the moisture from his throat and eye-balls. He decided to stay inside.

  •

  Undimmed by day the circling constellations glittered over polar ice and snow; the North Star stood at the zenith. Now and again, above the frozen ocean, the aurora flared bright. Hour by hour the heat radiated off. The temperature fell; the weight of air grew heavier; the pressure rose. And inevitably the hour of the break grew closer.

  FOURTH DAY

  1

  Weather-wise after their kind, men say, the frogs from their puddles croak before rain, and the mountain goats move to the sheltered face of the peak before the blizzard strikes. Such also may have been the wisdom of man’s ancestors before man was. In nerve-endings now decadent, they felt the moisture in the air; in the liquids of their joints they sensed the falling pressure.

  The ages passed; brow and chin moved forward; man walked two-legged upon the earth. Hunter lying in wait, seed-gatherer wandering afield—they came to know vaguely the warnings of wind and cloud. And as fire (the new-found ally) flickered upon the cave-wall, they entrusted their knowledge to language (that great preserver of knowledge), fashioning rhymes and saws and proverbs. But language, which always said too much or too little, was also a great corrupter of knowledge. He who handled words most cunningly was seldom the wisest, but the catchiest proverbs, not the truest, survived. (So even yet those who speak English say:

  Rain before seven,

  Clear before eleven.

  But those who speak other languages do not say that particular foolishness, not because they are wiser, but because in their speech the two numerals fail to rhyme.)

  Then, when many generations had passed, came high-priests and shamans and medicine-men. Self-deceived, stupid followers of tradition, or mere cynics, they beat drums for rain, and cried that the gods were wroth. They sacrificed bullocks, and gashed themselves with knives and lancets before the altars of Baal.

  Next, too briefly, came the clean Hellenic mind searching rational truth. “The storm lasted three days,” wrote Herodotus. “At last, by offering victims to the Winds, and charming them with the help of conjurers, while they sacrificed to Thetis and the Nereids, the Magians succeeded in laying the storm.” And then he added dryly, “Or perhaps it ceased of itself.” Plato first used the word meteorology, meaning talk of high, celestial things, beyond the realm of air. Aristotle, canny north-country man, shunning such poetic flim-flam, took over the word for the study of all actions of wind, rain, and vapor in the air itself.

  Ptolemy recorded his observations systematically, and Hippocrates studied the effect of weather upon his patients. But the Hellenic spirit withered, and the Roman mind was incurious and superstitious. Even the great Virgil commended the heifers and the rooks as divinely inspired weather-prophets, and the keen-witted Horace (more in jest than in earnest, we hope) saw the warning of Jove in an unexpected clap of thunder. Augur, astrologer, and wind-selling witch held sway through long centuries.

  At last Galileo questioned nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum, and recommended the problem to one of his students for investigation. From this beginning sprang modern meteorology. Temperature, wind, even humidity, man could feel through his own senses and roughly estimate. But pressure, most valuable guide of all, was too subtle for him, until he achieved the barometer. Then at last he came to know the waves and whirlpools, the swirling shallows and stagnant deeps, of that ever-changing ocean of air on the bottom of which the civilizations flourish and decay.

  And since the storm knows no boundary of race or continent, men of all nations perforce have labored together to learn the ways of weather. Torricelli, the Italian, invented the barometer. Halley, the Englishman, mapped the winds. Franklin, the American, audaciously grasped the idea of a revolving and traveling storm. Coriolis, the Frenchman, discovered how the earth’s own rotation shifts the wind. Buys Ballots’s Law derives from a curiously named Dutchman; Dove, the German, stated the laws of storms; Bjerknes, the Norwegian, probed their nature and explained their life-history.

  To these and many others man owes it that he no longer babbles a charm, or tears his flesh in supplication to a storm-demon. Ahead, if man can but conquer himself, lies every hope of greater victory. Still farther off, beyond limits of rational prophecy, lies the time when by arts as yet unimagined man may attain that dream of Magian, witch, and druid—not to predict weather, but to control it.

  2

  A medium-weight truck, unloaded, was being driven northward along one of the secondary highways in the Sacramento Valley. On its floor was lying a piece of two-by-four lumber about two feet long, recently used to block a wheel. The pavement on the secondary highway was not very smooth, and the truck bounced considerably. The two-by-four worked back a little at every jolt until it balanced at the edge. The truck then crossed a badly designed culvert. The two-by-four toppled off, rolled over and slid by the force of its own momentum, and then lay near the edge of the pavement.

  •

  In the year 1579 Sir Francis Drake landed on the California coast, and in the same year a cedar tree was sprouting on the lip of a ravine far up in the Sierra Nevada. Where thousands of contemporary seedlings succumbed to the pitiless competition of the mature forest, this particular sprout survived; it grew for more than two centuries under moderately favorable conditions, and attained a thickness of nearly three feet. It was, however, rooted somewhat insecurely, and in the year 1789 a windstorm overthrew it. The long trunk toppled across the ravine and downhill; with a shattering crash it struck a ledge of rock, and broke into three pieces.

  Decay is slow in the Sierra; nevertheless, the base and top of the tree, having fallen into somewhat moist spots, disappeared before the first emigrant train passed close by, letting their wagons down the canyon-side with ropes. The central section of the tree, a jagged-ended bole about twenty feet long and two feet in diameter, lay upon the rocky ledge, as if upon a prepared foundation, almost insulated from contact with moist earth.

  The railroad was put through not a hundred ya
rds uphill from where the bole was lying. Below, along the river, men constructed the highway and the pole lines for telephone and telegraph and electric power. The planes hummed high overhead, and upon winter week-ends an up-ski operated nearby.

  The bole had lost its bark, but otherwise still seemed sound timber. Inevitably, however, the slow fire of decay burned within it, and chiefly in the lower parts, which were in contact with the rock. Since even partially rotted wood is lighter than sound wood, this process of decay caused the gradual rise of that theoretical point called the center of gravity, until the log was in unstable equilibrium. During the last autumn, as decay weakened the fibers along its lower side, the bole had begun to settle downhill, sometimes as much as a hundredth of an inch a day. Every movement in this direction, however small, brought closer by a month or two the moment at which the bole would have to readjust its position.

  Moreover, during the past summer, a chipmunk had burrowed beneath, and now lay hibernating comfortably. By removing a pound or two of gravel he had lessened the capacity of the foundation to resist the slowly shifting weight.

  •

  “Dirty Ed” was sixteen and a holy terror. He took his .22 rifle, and with a friend called Lefty went down along the marshes of the Bay shore. The two were bad shots, and managed only to splash water in the vicinity of several mud-hens. They thought their ammunition was all used up, and started home; then Ed found one more cartridge at the bottom of his pocket. They looked for a bird, cat, or dog, and then Lefty dared Ed to shoot at a switch-box which loomed up plainly on a pole some fifty yards away. The pole was on the highway along which was passing a continuous stream of traffic. At this particular point, however, the highway dipped into an underpass beneath the railroad tracks. Shooting right across the highway was thus not really very dangerous, and it was a swell thing to say you had done.