Upon the present map four such storms stood out boldly—concentricities of black-pencil curves about centers marked LOW, the curves sharpening to angles as they crossed certain red, blue, or purple lines. Sylvia was a vigorous storm now centering over Boston; it—or she—had just brought heavy snowfall to the northeastern states and was now moving out to sea, leaving a cold-snap behind. Felicia was a weak disturbance over Manitoba; she had little past and probably not much future. Cornelia was a large mature storm centering four hundred miles at sea southeast of Dutch Harbor. Antonia, young and still growing, was moving out into mid-ocean some two thousand miles behind Cornelia. In spite of their distances apart, the storms overlapped, and a curved belt of disturbed weather thus extended from Nova Scotia clear across to Japan.

In the western United States, however, and over the adjacent part of the Pacific Ocean the black curves nowhere crossed colored lines or sharpened to angles; they lay far apart and were drawn about points marked HIGH. To the Junior Meteorologist these were all obvious signs of clear calm weather. In the jargon of his trade, this region was covered by “the semi-permanent Pacific High.” He looked at it malignantly. Then he smiled, for he noticed that the High had today accidentally assumed the shape of a gigantic dog’s head. Rising from the Pacific waters it looked out stupidly across the continent. The blunt nose just touched Denver; the top of the head was in British Columbia. A small circle over southern Idaho supplied an eye; three concentric ovals pointing southwest from the California coast furnished a passable ear.

Dog’s head or not—the Pacific High was no laughing matter for California. While it remained, every storm advancing in boldly from the Pacific would sheer off northeastward. A drenching rain would pour down upon the south Alaskan coast and Vancouver Island; a steady drizzle in Seattle and Portland. But San Francisco and the Great Valley would have only cloud, while still farther south Los Angeles would continue to bake in the sunshine. In its actuality, invisible to man’s eye, the Pacific High lay upon the map as clearly as a mountain range—and not less important than the Sierra Nevada itself in its effects upon the people of California.

Far away from the American coast, in the upper left-hand corner of the map, long lines which were close together and almost parallel ran from the interior of Asia southward to China and then curved eastward into the Pacific. To the Junior Meteorologist this too was a commonplace—the visible sign of that great river of wind, the winter monsoon, at work pouring out the cold air from Siberia. He noted in passing that the temperature at Peiping was eight below zero Fahrenheit. With more professional interest he let his eyes follow along those curving lines which ran into the Pacific.