Word: weather
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...years as a weatherman-five of them as chief meteorologist for the city of New York-Benjamin Parry has seen vast improvements in weather predictions and weather service. The Weather Bureau (which once closed up shop every night at 10) now gives 24-hour service, predicts minimum & maximum temperatures, wind velocities, and types and volume of precipitation...
...telephone switchboard answers 50,000 calls every 24 hours, with recorded weather information. It operates a teletype system which supplies 38 radio stations and 30 newspapers with predictions. It recently started a radio facsimile transmission service, which sends weather maps within a 70-mile radius of the city. Though still far from perfect, its information has improved in accuracy immensely during the three decades of Parry's service in New York...
...last week as he prepared to retire, it seemed that these improvements had only increased the hoots, catcalls, and cries of anguish amid which he has done his work. The New Yorker is a creature who feels that the weather ought to be regulated rather than predicted: there is evidence that he believes Parry controls a fiendish mechanism which causes rain whenever he plans a weekend at the beach, or snow when he parks his automobile in the street...
When he has the public, as well as wind and rain in his hair, Parry takes comfort from a poem pinned on the wall of the New York Weather Bureau...
Another bad feature of the old-style ranges is that airliners have to fly directly from station to station. This causes traffic congestion. In bad weather a long-distance plane cannot strike off cross-country to avoid the neighborhood of a busy airport. If it does, it gets off the beam and may have to go through time-wasting maneuvers to get back on again...