face settled into a frown.
That night I took the slideway home to my hotel. It was a beautiful warm night, with the thinnest sliver of a moon in a cloudless, star-studded sky. I found myself wishing it would rain.
While Ted was studying the drought pattern, I decided to take a look at the political climate of New England. I found that most of the people in the governments of the six states considered the drought bothersome, but not really serious. No one seemed terribly worried; the salt-water conversion plants were preventing any real shortages in the coastal cities, and the inland reservoirs were still in fairly good shape.
But there was going to be a meeting of the Resources Managers of the New England States, one of a series of regional meetings for various departments of the state governments. This one was for the people who worry about natural resources . . . such as water.
I cornered Ted in Tuli’s kinetics lab and told him about it. “It’s going to be over the Fourth of July weekend.”
“Foul up the weekend to talk to a bunch of bureaucrats?” He was plainly disgusted.
“To talk,” I replied, “with the people who’ll buy drought alleviation . . . if you can sell it.”
“If I can sell it? Insults yet! Okay bossman, you want fireworks for the Glorious Fourth, you’ll get ’em.”
It took some string-pulling to get us on the conference agenda. I finally had to talk to a Congressman from Lynn; he was on the House of Representatives’ Science and Natural Resources Committee, and was helping to make the arrangements for the meeting.
The biggest job was getting Ted prepared to speak to a group of non-meteorologists. The first time he rehearsed his talk he spent fifty minutes showing slides and explaining the science of meteorology. We all tried to argue him out of it.
“It’s got to be simplified,” I insisted. “These people don’t understand meteorology. I couldn’t even follow most of your talk.”
He sat on the couch in my office and folded his arms like a stubborn little boy. “What do you want me to do, tell ‘em fairytales?”
“Right! Exactly right,” I said. “Tell them a fairy tale . . . a horror stow. Show them how bad this drought’s going to be. And then show them enough to convince them that you can break it up.”
“Is that fair?” Tuli asked.
“If you’re talking to people who don’t understand the nature of the problem,” Barney said, “you’ve got to speak in language that will get through to them.”
“Okay,” Ted said with a shrug. “The talk’ll be show business, not science.”
Take the energy of a full-fledged storm and compress it into a narrow funnel so that its wind speed reaches five hundred knots, causing a semi-vacuum inside its rotary structure. Such winds hit a wall with a force of a thousand pounds per square foot. And the vacuum immediately behind the wind makes the normal air pressure in a building explode the walls outward. Such a funnel makes a fine weapon, especially in a crowded city. It is called a tornado.
It was a gray, soggy afternoon in Tulsa, with thick bulbous clouds hanging low. The weather map showed a strong cold front approaching from the northwest, pushing into oppressively humid tropical air. A tornado alert had been issued by the Weather Bureau, and planes were seeding some of the clouds, trying to disperse them before danger struck. The shopping center was jammed nonetheless; tomorrow, the Fourth, stores would be closed. The funnel dropped out of the clouds suddenly, hissing and writhing like a supergiant snake, spewing lightning. It touched a pond and instantly sucked it dry, hopped over a parking lot, and pounced on the main shopping buildings. They exploded. It was all over in thirty seconds. Forty-two killed, more than a hundred injured. The funnel disappeared, and soon after the clouds blew away. The sun shone down on five acres of sheer devastation.
Ted and I saw the results of the tornado on the TV news as we
That night I took the slideway home to my hotel. It was a beautiful warm night, with the thinnest sliver of a moon in a cloudless, star-studded sky. I found myself wishing it would rain.
While Ted was studying the drought pattern, I decided to take a look at the political climate of New England. I found that most of the people in the governments of the six states considered the drought bothersome, but not really serious. No one seemed terribly worried; the salt-water conversion plants were preventing any real shortages in the coastal cities, and the inland reservoirs were still in fairly good shape.
But there was going to be a meeting of the Resources Managers of the New England States, one of a series of regional meetings for various departments of the state governments. This one was for the people who worry about natural resources . . . such as water.
I cornered Ted in Tuli’s kinetics lab and told him about it. “It’s going to be over the Fourth of July weekend.”
“Foul up the weekend to talk to a bunch of bureaucrats?” He was plainly disgusted.
“To talk,” I replied, “with the people who’ll buy drought alleviation . . . if you can sell it.”
“If I can sell it? Insults yet! Okay bossman, you want fireworks for the Glorious Fourth, you’ll get ’em.”
It took some string-pulling to get us on the conference agenda. I finally had to talk to a Congressman from Lynn; he was on the House of Representatives’ Science and Natural Resources Committee, and was helping to make the arrangements for the meeting.
The biggest job was getting Ted prepared to speak to a group of non-meteorologists. The first time he rehearsed his talk he spent fifty minutes showing slides and explaining the science of meteorology. We all tried to argue him out of it.
“It’s got to be simplified,” I insisted. “These people don’t understand meteorology. I couldn’t even follow most of your talk.”
He sat on the couch in my office and folded his arms like a stubborn little boy. “What do you want me to do, tell ‘em fairytales?”
“Right! Exactly right,” I said. “Tell them a fairy tale . . . a horror stow. Show them how bad this drought’s going to be. And then show them enough to convince them that you can break it up.”
“Is that fair?” Tuli asked.
“If you’re talking to people who don’t understand the nature of the problem,” Barney said, “you’ve got to speak in language that will get through to them.”
“Okay,” Ted said with a shrug. “The talk’ll be show business, not science.”
Take the energy of a full-fledged storm and compress it into a narrow funnel so that its wind speed reaches five hundred knots, causing a semi-vacuum inside its rotary structure. Such winds hit a wall with a force of a thousand pounds per square foot. And the vacuum immediately behind the wind makes the normal air pressure in a building explode the walls outward. Such a funnel makes a fine weapon, especially in a crowded city. It is called a tornado.
It was a gray, soggy afternoon in Tulsa, with thick bulbous clouds hanging low. The weather map showed a strong cold front approaching from the northwest, pushing into oppressively humid tropical air. A tornado alert had been issued by the Weather Bureau, and planes were seeding some of the clouds, trying to disperse them before danger struck. The shopping center was jammed nonetheless; tomorrow, the Fourth, stores would be closed. The funnel dropped out of the clouds suddenly, hissing and writhing like a supergiant snake, spewing lightning. It touched a pond and instantly sucked it dry, hopped over a parking lot, and pounced on the main shopping buildings. They exploded. It was all over in thirty seconds. Forty-two killed, more than a hundred injured. The funnel disappeared, and soon after the clouds blew away. The sun shone down on five acres of sheer devastation.
Ted and I saw the results of the tornado on the TV news as we
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