Lakes, but in the season just closed, there has not been a single really heavy storm. In far northwestern Canada, Yukon, and the lower Mackenzie valley the rivers were open a month or more beyond the ordinary date of freezing up, and reports from Labrador indicate a very protracted autumn.

While the barometric depression passing over the central and eastern portions of the continent this past autumn have been comparatively unimportant, some of them merit attention, as their tracks have been abnormal. I will draw your attention to three of them, one, to my mind, very remarkable, and would seem to indicate a most unusual atmospheric movement.

Sir Frederic having unfortunately left at the hotel his lantern slides showing these weather conditions, he was constrained to describe them. First, he mentioned the very unusual series of storms this autumn, the first of which, September 30-October 1st moved from Bermuda to Nova Scotia, and the second, just after the middle of October, from east of Bermuda to north of the Great Lakes, this one having the most erratic movement that Sir Frederic could recall; and still later in October another from the south Atlantic coast to the Lake region. During the autumn the whole Northern Hemisphere circulation was most unusual.

At Toronto the December just drawing to a close, he said, was the warmest December since observations were begun in 1840. The unusual warmth also extended through western Canada. It was expected that no other month would be comparable to this one.

In closing Sir Frederic said a close study of pressure distribution in northwestern Canada would go far toward enabling us to explain variations in the characters of seasons from year to year.

NOTABLE meeting AT CINCINNATI

General statement

Mr. W. C. Devereaux, Official in Charge, U. S. Weather Bureau, Cincinnati, provided a welcome and a program which visiting meteorologists cannot forget. There were four meteorological luncheons and dinners. The most notable of these was tendered by the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. Vice-President A. Julius Freiberg read excerpts from the Chamber's annual reports for 1869 and 1870 recounting the origin in Cincinnati of American weather forecasting based on telegraphic re ports, under the financial support of that organization. Professor C. F. Marvin, Chief, U. S. Weather Bureau; Sir Frederic Stupart, Director, Canadian Meteorological Service; and Prof. H. J. Cox, District Fore caster, U. S. Weather Bureau, Chicago, briefly commented on the im mediate outcome of this first private attempt the formation of the government weather services. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley closed the speaking with appreciative remarks concerning his old friend Cleveland Abbe whose weather forecasting ideas the Chamber of Commerce had brought to fruition.

The most important group of papers and much discussion centered on what might be called hydro-meteorology, especially flood forecasting so extremely valuable along the Ohio River, especially at Cincinnati

eal Investigations concerning conditions in the free air also received much Ma attention.

ste

The presidential address was of an historical nature, made vivid by the personal recollections of Sir Frederic Stupart, veteran director of the Canadian Meteorological Service.

Professor W. I. Milham, of Williams College, was elected President, 70 and Dr. A. E. Douglass, Vice-President. Secretary C. F. Brooks and be Treasurer W. R. Gregg were retained, and five outgoing Councilors were nin replaced by the following, for three years: E. H. Bowie, R. E. Horton, her H. H. Kimball, John Patterson, and B. J. Sherry. A full report of the meeting will be published in this and later Bulletins of the American Meteorological Society.

lid

he

MINUTES OF CINCINNATI MEETING
Including Abstracts of Papers and Discussions

Not On Thursday afternoon, December 27, some 20 fellows and members st of the American Meteorological Society attended the opening session of rathe Association of American Geographers.

A cruise with the International Ice Patrol
By R. DEC. WARD

(To be published in full in Monthly Weather Review. See also Geo-
graphical Review, Jan., 1924, vol. 14, pp. 50-61, 3 maps, 8 photos.)
By invitation of the Commandant of the U. S. Coast Guard the
writer was permitted to take part in the June, 1923, cruise of the U. S.
Coast Guard Cutter Tampa, on Ice Patrol in the North Atlantic. Three
weeks were spent at sea, sixteen days of this time being on actual Ice
Patrol duty. The International Ice Patrol dates from the sinking of
the Titanic, April 14, 1912. Within a month of that disaster, the U. S.
Hydrographic Office suggested to the Navy Department the importance
of the immediate establishment of an ice patrol. During the summer of
1912, two Navy vessels performed this duty. In 1913 the U. S. Revenue
Cutter Service carried on the patrol. In 1914 the work was done by the
U. S. Coast Guard, which has succeeded the Revenue Cutter Service.
Since 1914, with the exception of the two years of our participation in
the War, two Coast Guard cutters have been on duty each ice season.
These cutters alternate in their cruising, the actual time on ice patrol
being fifteen days for each cutter. At the end of that period, she is re-
lieved by her sister ship, and returns to Halifax for fuel and supplies.
The business of the Ice Patrol is to find the icebergs which menace
navigation on the transatlantic steamer routes which skirt the "tail"
of the Great Bank of Newfoundland. In clear weather, the patrol ship
searches the area, locates all the icebergs, charts their positions, and
follows them during their wanderings. Radio reports are sent out to
all passing vessels, and to Washington. In foggy weather, the patrol
ship drifts or, if on the Bank, anchors, waiting for clear weather in
order that she may continue her search. During the June cruise, fog
prevailed 70 per cent of the time. Observations were made of the lapse
rate between the deck and the "crow's nest" of the Tampa during fogs,
and also of the formation of convectional fog whirls, in the late after-

noon hours, when there was a rapid vertical decrease of temperature between the warm lower air over the Gulf Stream and the cold surface of the fog bank, from which active radiation was taking place.

Most of the bergs come from the fringe of glaciers bordering the west coast of Greenland, east of Baffin Bay, and represent the wastage from the Greenland ice cap.

One glacier in west Greenland is reported to "calve" on the average one iceberg a day, and this record is probably equalled in other cases. Once icebergs are afloat, and free to move, they start to drift under the influence of the currents and winds. Many doubtless never leave their home latitudes. Others, after drifting to and fro, find their way into the cold current flowing southward through Davis Strait, known farther south as the Labrador current.

Some of these become stranded off the Labrador coast. Others ground on the northern slope of the Great Bank, others move westward along the southern coast of Newfoundland. Relatively few eventually travel eastward, and then southward toward the tail of the Bank, but it is these which constitute the greatest danger to transatlantic steamers while following the most used steamer lanes.

Here the interplay of the cold Labrador water and the warmer Gulf Stream water, resulting in a more or less complex and varying series of eddies and currents, carries the bergs back and forth. Their courses, which often seem erratic, now appear after careful study, to conform more or less to certain general rules.

It is the marginal region between the cold and the warm currents that is the critical one for shipping, and it is the determination of the shifting boundary line between the safe and the unsafe areas which is one of the constant duties of the ice patrol. Hence the great importance of an accurate knowledge of the water temperature, in ascertaining which the co-operation of all steamers in the danger zone is asked and expected. The dividing line between Labrador current and Gulf Stream is often sharply defined, not only by temperature, but also by the color of the water and by the "rips" which are seen, and felt, between the two currents.

The summer and winter weather of selected cities of North America

By GEORGE F. HOWE

(Probably to be published in Monthly Weather Review)

For purposes of giving a clear picture of the climate of a place a statement of the frequencies with which well known weather types occur is essential.

Many studies have been made of the factors in weather which vary, such as rainfall, humidity, temperature and others, but it is not each factor varying by itself which makes up our weather in most cases, but the several factors in their daily combinations.

Thirteen types of weather were chosen and for the five-year period, 1917-1921, the percentage frequencies of each were found for various cities in North America. The thirteen types are derived from the important combinations of four classes of temperature, two of precipitation and two of wind; hot and rainy; hot, fair and windy; hot, fair and