To calm himself, he got up and turned on the light. His alarm clock pointed to three-ten, and ticked stolidly on. But the worry about the forecast which had formed his dream did not leave him. Like any rustic, he leaned from the window and looked at the sky. There was not a star in sight. “She’s coming all right,” he said to himself, for he felt the southerly wind, and knew that during the night the far-flung cloud-deck of the storm must have moved in. First of all would have come the little banners of cirrus, scattered wisps of ice-crystals, miles high; after them the high, wide-spreading cirrus haze; and then the thicker and lower clouds of the middle air, water-droplets held suspended as in fog, dense enough to obscure the moon and let even the dullest person know that the storm was nearing. From the intensity of the night he judged that this dark layer of altostratus now covered the sky.

He began dressing. Too late to go back to bed, he said to himself; but he knew that really he wanted to get to the office and see what was happening.

•

The barometer had started to fall, and most of northern California reported cloud. But there was as yet no rain at any of the land stations. By the time the Chief had got the map drawn, he was back to normal.

Yesterday he had felt himself at the central calm of four great atmospheric forces. Today there were only three. The Pacific High, dominant for so many weeks, had taken a knock-out blow from the in-driving storm. The other great storm which had moved down from Alberta centered now over Indiana, and held in the swirl of its winds all the United States east of the Rockies. Behind its cold front the blizzard was engulfing Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. But this cold wave covering all the interior of the Continent was only one discharge from the vast high-pressure area which dominated the Canadian Northwest and the interior of Alaska. For so immense was the accumulation of cold air that it was forcing a way across and around the high mountains of Alaska and reaching southward in a long tongue across the Pacific behind the storm which was just approaching California. As for that storm, the Chief decided, it was growing old, but still had plenty of fight left in it, and was in a situation where it might well be rejuvenated.