WEATHER FORECASTS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21753, 30 June 1945, Page 6

WEATHER FORECASTS

BRITISH WAR INVENTIONS STORMS "DETECTED LONDON, June 26. I Tiie Evening Standard correspondent, after visiting the “hush-hush” central forecasting station at Dunstable, Bedfordshire, tells of .some meteorological inventions which played a leading part in the defeat of Germany. He saw a “thunderstorm locator” which has been a closelyguarded secret during the war. It is an aluminium-faced apparatus with a mass of complicated dials, knobs and winking red lights. This and two others, located in Scotland and Cornwall, enable the scientists to ascertain the exact position of any thunderistorm within a radius of 1500 miles by recording the lightning flashes and giving tiie directions from which they come. The tracks of the thunderstorms are followed, thus enabling an accurate forecast of the time when they begin to affect the British Isles. Another apparatus, called a “radiosonde," supplies accurate information about conditions in the upper air by recording signals from a tiny radio transmitter on hydrogen-filled balloons released from eight British meteorological stations and also in Iceland. North Africa and the Azores. Tiie balloons emit signals as they ascend 10 miles. One hundred reconnaissance aeroplanes also supply high-altitude weather information by radio-telephone. '