lantic from east to west. He put to sea with favorable northeast winds, but subsequently, it became evident later, encountered areas of falling barometer in mid-Atlantic, with freezing temperature that may well have weighted his plane with ice.
Dr. Kimball told me, too, what happened when Admiral Byrd started for France. At Cape Race, the easternmost point of Newfoundland, a barometer recorded fair weather. But hourly reports from a vessel heading westward on the steamer lane recorded a steadily falling barometer. Apparently a storm lay across its course, which was also Byrd’s.
At midnight just off Cape Race, the final message came from the steamer. The reading of its barometer was far lower than that of the barometer ashore. At once the meteorologist, studying all the available data in his New York office, realized that the ship’s barometer was inaccurate—that actually there was no storm on the first leg of the journey.
“The start of that Byrd flight was the most dramatic of all,” Dr. Kimball told me. “When I told him of the adverse prospects for the next day, he went to sleep. He was staying with a friend on Long Island, not far from Roosevelt Field. When at midnight we ran down this mistake of barometric readings, the whole map changed.
“I phoned Byrd, and told him it looked pretty hopeful for the following winds he needed. Then I worked out the weather map as quickly as I could and drove out to him. We got there about two o’clock and went over the situation.
