Weather or Not

Weather or Not

Finally there have been some further historic and vitally important releases coming from the Taurus Foemus Institute of Bologna, Italy.  These findings which will be published here, will not be available anywhere else in the known universe of information, or even on the internet.   The topic is, as we say in the world of science, quite topical.  Everyone is always talking about the weather, from global warming to climate change to why are the weathermen wrong so much.  We do not have the answers to any of those questions, but more to the history of weather science and weather forecasting.  

A long time ago, back in the medieval times, weather was still a very inexact science, even more than it is today, if that’s possible.  One of the early pioneers of weather forecasting was a little known researcher from a small town ion Heissehaus in the northwest part of what is now modern Germany.  His name was Johann Sebastian Funk.  He was always looking for a way to earn a few coins to support himself and his family.  One day, while lazing in his bunk prior to performing his morning ablutions, an idea came to him about the weather.  He thought, wouldn’t it be important to the big shots in the area to know what the weather was going to be tomorrow?  There were many armies marching back and forth in the land, as they were in the midst of the 30 years war.  It seemed like somebody was always fighting someone.  If he could let the local prince know the coming weather, maybe it would help them defeat their enemies.

JS, as he was known to his friends, quickly came up with a plan.  He got a cart and filled it with lumber and brought a couple of his sons with him and rode out over a half a days journey to the west.  He found a suitable hillside and began to build a tower.  When it was completed, he left his oldest son Johann Sebastian Funk II, or the Deuce, to stay with this tower.  Then he drove out about another half days journey to the west and erected another tower.  Here he left his trusted assistant Kenny Offenbach, to stay at this tower.  Here was the plan:  When Kenny saw a storm coming, he was to ride his horse as quickly as possible to the first tower and give the details to the Deuce, and then the son would ride swiftly to town to tell JS about the oncoming storm.  The first chance to try the system came in a couple days.  When JS got the report, he quickly rode to the castle of the local prince and requested an audience.  He told the prince that by tomorrow morning it would be pouring rain here in town.  The prince thought that JS was daft and had him put in the stocks overnight.  But, the next morning, when the rains did come down in buckets, the prince was impressed and began to plot with JS to put this information to use.  

The local prince, Prince Schlaumeir by name, was in the midst of an ongoing war with a neighboring duke.  The duke usually had the advantage over the prince because the duke had a large amount of horsemen who were able to defeat the slow moving infantry of the prince.  But if the prince knew that there would be a day of drenching rain, the duke’s horses would not be able to navigate the mud as well as the foot soldiers of the prince, who would be wearing their mud boots.  So, once he got the word of a downpour coming the next day, he set his men on a forced march to the lands of the duke and indicated that he would be attacking the duke.  The duke called out all his horsemen the next morning to parry the charge.  Just as they were about to take the field, the rains came in buckets, the horses floundered and the prince had a resounding victory over his enemy.  With this secret weapon Prince Schlaumeir believed that he would get a roll of conquests and finish off this 30 years war in maybe 15 years.  

Things went well for a few months for the prince and for J S Funk.  One fine day JS told the prince that he could send his troops out on the morrow wearing their light gear, with just their short fighting pants, tennis shoes and their caps with the flaps up, even though it was late November.  Unfortunately for the prince and even more so for JS, a freak winter storm came out of the north and freezing sleet, which turned to snow sent the army of the prince into a slushy and bloody defeat by a better prepared army.  JS had to flee the realm, with a price on his head and the prince soon became very small potatoes.

The next notable weather event came about twenty years later.  Another German, pseudo-scientist by name of Adalbert Sonnenschien.  He was a local farmer of renowned wisdom.  He seemed to have a knack for being able to reasonably predict the weather for the local kleinbauers or farmers.  He developed the first regular weather scale.  Adalbert had a sliding scale that he would announce in the morning as the locals gathered to have their cup of swill before going out to the fields.  The weather forecast would be:  Very hot, hot, warm, not too hot, not too cold, cool, cooler, cold, colder than a  coal miners underwear.   Interspersed with these words, he would add in, possibility of rain, or snow or ice, depending on the situation.  It was just about like the weather forecasts of today, without a number or temperature thrown in there.  This scale was acceptable to the local kleinbauers for a while, but eventually they and others wanted a better gauge of the weather.

So just after this, onto the scene arrived the German scientist Fahrenheit.  He was always trying to find a better way to measure the temperature of things, from water to the weather.  He eventually came up with a system to show the temperatures with 32 degrees being when water would freeze.  Unfortunately, just when he started to make money with his thermometers and Fahrenheit dolls, teddy bears and Fahrenheit souvenir beer mugs, another lug up in Sweden came up with a different gauge of temperatures.  This was Celsius.  His scale showed zero for when water would freeze.  This system quickly took off, due in part to a great advertising campaign by his sponsor a guy by the name of Baron Quasimodo Centigrade.  He had them name the scale after himself., as Celsius had passed away.   So it was Fahrenheit and Centigrade until in mid 20th century,  Celsius’ advocates finally had the scale named for Celsius again.  

The United States and a few other enlightened countries still use the Fahrenheit system in resistance to Celsius and the likely requirement to convert to the metric system for everything else.  There is much more available in the translations of the research, but this is an easy synopsis for our usual readership who can use this for discussion topics with the various tosspots at the local tavern.

copyright 2019

One thought on “Weather or Not”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *