"This is the Weather Office..."

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 497, 31 December 1948, Page 10

"This is the Weather Office..."

F the voices most familiar to listeners in all parts of the country perhaps the best known are the sober tones which break into the programmes at the same times each day throughout the year with the laconic statement, "This is the Weather Office." Their short contributions to the _day’s broadcasting are, in some ways, the most eagerly awaited of all. The. information they give, besides being of interest value to almost everyone, is of vital importance to people in many of the trades and professions on which the prosperity of New Zealand greatly depends.

| Listeners who can manage to get out | to the pictures during the coming week i will have an opportunity of seeing for | themselves how the men and women of ; the Weather Office work. "This is the | Weather Office" is the title of a full-reel | issue of the National Film Unit’s Weekly ) Review which will start screening in the 'main centres on New Year’s Eve. | Directed by J. M. D. Hardwick and | photographed by Alan Whittle, with sound \recording by Claude Wickstead, the film shows something of the daily routine of the forecasting section of the Weather Office. The flow of reports from weather observers, professional and amateur, in all parts of New Zealand and.her dependencies, is seen coming into the Dominion Weather Office in Wellington. New Zealand is served by 120 reporting stations, all but 17 of which are the responsibility of amateur observers, working voluntarily and conscientiously with a few simple instruments. Many rely mainly upon a lifelong experience of the weather and its ways. Their assistance has become a most important feature of the weather service. After touching upon the Tokelaus and Campbell Island, both important links in the chain of reporting stations, the camera goes aboard an American cargo vessel returning across the Pacific to San Francisco and one sees the Navigator

preparing information for transmission by the ship’s radio to the New Zealand weather service. Another of the film’s sequences was shot in Auckland at the radiosonde station at Mechanic’s Bay and at the Whenuapai radar installation. This shows how meteorological officers obtain information of conditions in the upper air, where much of the weather is formed. As all this information reaches the Weather Office the plotter there is seen noting it down in the form of symbols on the current chart. When the chart is complete it is passed on to the forecaster himself. He is solely responsible for compiling the latest forecast, and an animated sequence in the film shows briefly how he does it. The forecast ready, it goes out immediately, by all available means-by telegram and telephone and newspaper and radio, to every part of the area it has to serve. The voice that reads it over the air is the voice of the forecaster himself, telling the farmer, the housewife, the sportsman and the gardener what they can expect the weather to do during the next two days. "One of the most vital of national and international services," says the last line of the film’s commentary, "is provided by the work of the Weather Office."