Though much time had passed, the American Meteorological Society had not forgotten the article under Krick's name in Remington Rand's house organ. On February 24, 1958, nearly three months after Krick had let Secretary Malone know that he would have to miss the January summons to come and discuss the piece, Malone wrote again, repeating the request to meet with them, this time on May 6, in Washington.

"In the event that you do not choose to honor this request," Malone said "the Council can delay no longer and will have to make a finding concerning a possible breach of the Code of Ethics of the Society by you on the basis of the evidence now before it."

Leaving no stone unturned, Malone also wrote to A. C. Hancock, the editor of Systems, "to verify statements concerning the authorship of the article, explaining, "The matter has considerable bearing on a case involving possible breech [sic] of professional ethics by a member of our Society.' "

Did Krick write the piece, Malone asked, or was it written by somebody else hired by the company? If Krick did not write the piece, did he approve it? The company finally confirmed that it, and not Krick, had prepared the offending article.

This in no way dampened the AMS's zeal in getting Krick before them, however. Krick canceled a trip in order to be there on the new date, May 6. As he awaited the appointment with his inquisitors, Krick sought the Society's permission to submit a paper at its National Conference on Practical Problems of Modern Meteorology at Denver in the autumn. "The title of my paper," Krick let them know, "is, Long-Range Forecasting by Electronic Computer," addressing his query to S. B. Beckwith, chairman of the program committee.

Krick included something of what his paper would cover. "If you find the subject of this paper suitable," he wrote, "will you please confirm its acceptance at your early convenience, so that I may plan accordingly."

Chairman Beckwith evidently did not find the subject of long- range weather forecasting suitable to a meeting on the problems of meteorology. "At this time plans are not formed as to the exact program layout," Beckwith replied briefly-and that was that.

As the showdown between Krick and the AMS approached, the Society heard from another quarter in the matter. Krick's longtime mentor, Dr. Theodore von Karman, now chairman of Research and Development at NATO, wrote to them on Krick's behalf with Old World courtesy and somewhat in terms of a Dutch Uncle.

He told how Krick had recognized very early "the economic value of good weather forecasting" and had set up a private consulting service, with Millikan and von Karman's blessings. This was in line with "the free spirit which always prevailed at CalTech for industrial consulting work and other activities of the faculty members. He believed that this "liberal spirit" was responsible for Cal-Tech's success in the field of aeronautics and related industries.

"I also believe," he went on, "that it was shortsighted on the part of the present administration [that of Dr. DuBridge] to cut out Meteorology completely from the curriculum of the Institute."

Then von Karman came to the point: "I do not believe that theoretical solution of the long-range weather forecasting is really established," he wrote. "I am, however, certain that purely theoretical methods cannot be established in the framework of the usual meteorological computations which are essentially two-dimensional. In this situation a half-empirical .procedure, as the so-called historical method based on the analysis of a material carefully collected over several decades and analyzed with reasonable mathematical means using recent progresses of the electronic computers, can serve an honest and useful purpose.

"I'm afraid a kind of indictment of such a method on 'ethical' grounds will be considered by the scientific world at present, and especially in the future, as an example of the many narrow-minded professional declarations which have occurred so often in the history of science. I do not think that it is in the interest of the American Meteorological Society to increase the number of such examples."

He proposed that the AMS publish a monograph, written by members of Krick's group, the American Institute of Aerological Research, discussing the development and application of their methods. Then, he suggested, a committee of the Society should be established to confirm and verify the results of their work "within mutually agreed tolerances."

In a nutshell, the AMS should find out what it was talking about before passing judgments.

Krick urged the AMS to follow von Karman's suggestions when he appeared before its council, saying: "I am convinced that only by this means, or such other as will achieve like results, can the Society perform its full duty to its membership, to the American people, and to the advancement of Science. I shall be delighted to cooperate with any acceptable group you designate and to make my records and staff in Denver, Colorado, available for that purpose."

If the Society refused to make such a study of his work, Krick said he felt that he would be "supporting a policy of static futility, of denial that science is a never ending search for truth," by remaining a member. "In such event," he concluded, "this letter is my resignation from the Society."

Six days after the hearing Secretary Malone informed Krick curtly: "The Council of the American Meteorological Society has concluded that you have violated the Society's Code of Ethics and finds that it cannot accept the conditions laid down in your statement to the Council dated May 6, 1958."

The refusal of the AMS to inform itself about Krick's long-range forecasting techniques brought a shocked response from Vincent Schaefer, who, along with lrving Langmuir, had discovered how raindrops are made.

"I have read your letter and its enclosures with dismay," Schaefer wrote on June 2, 1958. "The mounting inclination of groups and individuals of varying kinds and disciplines to issue 'pronouncements' on scientific subjects is a disturbing and potentially dangerous activity in the United States. It is in this manner that freedom can be lost. One might be inclined to have a tolerant attitude toward some of this activity if the state of our knowledge were considerably better than it is and those who thought they were being intelligent were more so! If they were, of course, they wouldn't try to do that very thing!"

Max Karant, vice president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, likewise had some things to say about the AMS action. "We're thoroughly familiar with the rough row being hoed by Dr. lrving P. Krick," he wrote Business Week, referring to a piece in the magazine's October II, 1958, issue: Charting Weather Years Ahead.

"We've helped pioneer the use of his techniques in civil aviation, and the results (not theory; results) have at times given us the creeps," Karant went on. "We publish a monthly feature in our magazine called 'AOPA'S Weathercast Dr. Krick's organizaton tailors this feature to our specific requirements: specify what weather will be VFR (Visual Flight Rules, with a minimum cloud base of 1000 feet and a minimum of three miles visibility), and what weather will be IFR (Instrument Flight Rules, weather below 1000 feet and three miles). I'm sure you'll admit that this is cutting the weather forecasting business pretty fine."

The feature had been running since March, Karant wrote (a: still runs today). At first the group thought of it only as an interesting feature. "But then we began to be brought up short by the general accuracy of the forecasts-prepared for AOPA on an average of three months in advance of the actual publication date. For example, AOPA Weathercast hit that devastating March 19-20 blizzard on the head, while the more conventional weather forecasters were busy beating all around the snowbank within hours of the actual storm. Then, in our September issue, the Weathercast tagged Hurricane Helene within hours of its actual arrival on the East Coast September 27. The forecast was prepared for us in June."

There had been many letters from members amazed by the a curacy of forecasts that far in advance, Karant said, adding that many pilots planned their flights on the Krick feature. "We've also been keeping books on Krick's overall performance-and he's averaging just over 85 percent accurate," he wrote.

"If the eggheads in the meteorology business (with whom we've had many years of experience) regard this sort of record as being the work of a charlatan," Karant commented acidly, "then they had better start setting up a Charlatan's Division for Scientific Study.

Although Krick was now outside the anointed fold of the American Meteorological Society, the group kept a suspicious eye on him. This was not hard to do, since Krick went on making news.

At the start of 1960, for example, the AMS was vexed to learn that Krick had been named official "weather engineer" for the Winter Olympics to be held at Squaw Valley, California, in February. It was bad enough to be told that Krick had selected the weather for the games two years earlier, singling out the last two weeks of February as the time best suited to the event. But there was more: Krick would also see to it that there was snow for the occasion, of the right kind and in the right amount.

The northern California chapter of the Society held an emergency meeting and instructed chairman Elmer Robinson to notify the Games' Organizing Committee of the Society's "concern and displeasure" with Krick's appointment. Accordingly, Chairman Robinson duly warned the Organizing Committee how important it was that "as a public body (it) not fall into a promotional trap."

Robinson added, "In addition, our group is not happy with the fact that the man selected by the Organizing Committee is not an AMS member and therefore not bound by the Society's concept of professional ethics." For instance, Robinson pointed out, Krick had picked the weather for the games two years before. "In the opinion of the Society," he said, "this is a scientific impossibility. To call these 'forecasts' does meteorology a disservice."

Krick planted twenty generators about the valley. Since there was little or no snow in sight for November or December, he first fired up the generators in November, starting quintillions of silver iodide particles drifting into the winter sky. He waited, then fired up again on January 8, 9, and 10.

On the morning of January 10 seven feet of snow covered the ski slopes and three-and-a-half feet mantled the valley floor. The perennial bugbear of insufficient snow for the winter Olympics seemed "pretty well dispelled a month before the opening of the VIII Olympic Winter Games," wrote Gladwin Hill of the New York Times on January 24.

"A heavy mantle of snow, forty to eighty inches deep, blankets the floor and slope of this Sierra Nevada mountain basin, where 800 athletes from some thirty nations soon will be converging,' Hill wrote.

To give people a chance to get there, Krick let up on the seeding a few days before the events were to start. On the final night, he fired up the generators a final time, "to provide a good snow base and quality for the Games."

As a crowning touch, just as the ceremonies opened, the clouds broke apart and the sun came through, brightly bathing the scene in sunlight while the Olympic flame was lighted. This was too much for the Russians. Eagerly they crowded around the interpreters and asked, "Have the Americans perfected weather control?"

When the games were over, Krick received a grateful note from H. D. Thoreau, managing director for the Organizing Committee of the Games, saying, "We were, indeed, fortunate in the selection of our dates for the Games from the standpoint of good weather."

The American Meteorological Society, however, remained inflexibly unimpressed. At the National Farm Directors' meeting in Chicago in November, 1960, the AMS was on hand to see that no one got slickered into the notion that better weather forecasting was just around the corner. The society passed out copies of its July I, 1957, statement that forecasts of two or three days ahead are about the best any honest man can do, and anybody who says he can go out a month or more is misleading the public.

It wasn't long after this that Krick had a golden new opportunity to demonstrate once again what the AMS doggedly insisted had never been demonstrated. "In going over reports of the Inauguration of four years ago," wrote Tyler Abell, vice-chairman of the Inaugural Committee, to Krick on December 13, 1960, "I noted you accurately predicted fair weather while everyone else was sorrowfully saying the Eisenhower luck had run out. . . . I understand that you are very much of an Eisenhower man, and predicted the weather for the President for years, but hope that you will help out the Inaugural Committee again, even though a Democrat is being sworn in this time."

Krick provided the forecast for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy on January 20 by return mail-so promptly that he felt obliged to explain. Since the Eisenhower inaugural in 1957, he wrote, they had greatly expanded their UNIVAC computer facilities, now located in Zurich, Switzerland.

"At this location we are performing the task of extending the evolution of weather events throughout the world for many years into the future," Krick wrote. "I give you this information lest you gain the impression that my immediate reply to your letter implies a lack of thorough study and investigation before issuing the Inaugural Forecast. Actually, the information from which it was derived was transmitted to Denver from our laboratories in Zurich in 1959 and is the basis for many studies and reports issued to our clients for the year 1961."

Krick's forecast for Washington on Inauguration Day, nearly six weeks away, called for "fair weather, with no precipitation. However, it will be cold," Krick predicted. "Snow may accompany a storm a few days prior to January 20 but there should be time to clear the streets following it. Another period of stormy weather will arrive in Washington late January 21 or 22. Therefore January 20 will simply be one of the days of fair weather between storms.

"In predicting weather events of this kind, pinpointed to a specific city," Krick wrote, "we maintain an accuracy in our timing of less than one day. Therefore I feel that you can go forward with complete assurance that the weather will not upset your plans."

As all who watched the inauguration of President Kennedy on January 20, 1961, will recall, the day was clear, with the sun shining brightly on the newly fallen snow-and it was cold: twenty-two degrees, just as Krick had said it would be a month and a half before.

Krick made his inaugural prediction at about the time the American Meteorological Society, in' its December bulletin, published an editorial which again raised the hackles of Max Karant of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Karant took it as a personal affront and protested in an irate letter to AMS secretary Malone.

"One of our members has just sent us a photostat of your editorial 'Society Policy on Ethics' in the December bulletin," Karant began. "He particularly marked the paragraph in which you refer to 'quackery'. .. . . You refer to 'wildly extravagant claims' and a spectacular-story in the press or trade magazine. . , .'

"This is of particular interest to me because ( I ) we happen to have one of the larger trade magazines, (2) we publish such material, which makes us eligible for the 'quackery' charge, and (3) our particular group of people (87,000 pilots and plane owners) probably have had more continuous, detailed, and often-frightening dealings with the ethical metcorologists I gather you represent than has any other comparable group.

"In the first place the term 'quackery' is synonymous with 'fake' and 'untrue,' " Karant continued hotly. "Our experience with the long-range forecast material we buy from the Krick organization . . . 'has been surprisingly good, on the factual record. Is this still 'quackery'?

"And, speaking for myself only, I would say that, in attempting to use airplanes for transportation, I have had my life literally placed in jeopardy by presumably 'pure' professional meteorologists so many times over so many years that it might even warrant a little closer attention to this 'quackery' of which you speak. As a pilot whose safety is constantly affected by the accuracy and reliability of the meteorologist. I'm a good deal more interested in better forecasting-by whatever system-than I am in the traditional preoccupation of the scientist with his sacrosanct scientific journal."

President Kennedy had not been long in office when, perhaps influenced by Krick's inaugural forecast, he indicated an interest in improved weather prediction and control. His remarks prompted Krick to wire the President advising him of a forthcoming discussion on these subjects between himself and Dave Garroway on Garroway's NBC "Today" television show. "During the past decade," Krick charged, "the U.S. has allowed the initiative in applying known techniques in precise long-range weather forecasting and control as developed in this country to pass to other NATO nations."

Krick's message to Kennedy was referred to Weather Bureau Chief Reichelderfer, who replied with one of his forward defenses of the service. Then he wrote a personal "Dear lrv" letter to Krick, sounding more plaintive than angry:

"Dear lrv: You and I have known each other for more than twenty years. I have always been open to frank and direct suggestions. If you felt as you indicated in your telegram to the President, why didn't you say something about it when we saw each other in New York in January? After all of these years of advancement of the science how do we interpret a move like your telegram?" Krick replied with twelve single-spaced pages, unloading a long accumulation of grievances. "You and I both know that 'official meteorology' in the U.S. has little competence in either precise long-range forecasting or weather control," he wrote, commenting that he found Reichelderfer's letter "typical of all correspondence between us in the past twenty years."

He accused the Weather Bureau of shrugging off any advances coming from outside its own circle. "Precise long-range weather forecasting . . . requires day-by-day prediction for years ahead." This had to come first-before there could be any large-scale planning of weather control operations. "To my knowledge our group is the only one in the world today successfully applying these principles. Now that other nations are using our results effectively, why isn't the United States?"

Krick accused the American Meteorological Society of continuing to reject the evidence of advancement in long-range weather forecasting, dismissing such forecasting as quackery. He accused the AMS of "steadfastly maintaining a closed mind," and of glossing over the need to look at new knowledge.

He cited the refusal of the AMS to consider the proposal of Theodore von Karman-"a world leader in science and technology and a man known by the AMS to be intimately familiar with our work"-that the Society look into Krick's methods. "Their refusal to examine the evidence supporting our claims (was) unworthy of a professional society representing itself to the public as a scientific body."

Forecasting by the United States Weather Bureau had not improved, Krick charged, despite the help of "globe-circling weather surveillance satellites, electronic computers and all of the modern paraphernalia with which to rapidly process weather information." What it lacked, he said, was "a valid method of forecasting." Without this, programmed to the machines, all the Bureau could hope for was to go on turning out "imperfect predictions with increasing rapidity, permitting the Weather Bureau to disseminate them to a greater segment of the population resulting in a continuing decline in the 'weatherman's' public image."

Krick reviewed the record of success which his CalTech system had met with in World War II and in the years since, enabling him and his associates to set up a worldwide weather forecasting and control service.

"If you and others had been completely unaware of Rossby's [Professor Carl] attempts to vitiate our work over a period of many years," Krick went on, "there might be some excuse for the present attitude of the Weather Bureau and the view of the AMS. However, the dangers of Rossby's program to discredit the CalTech meteorologists and the impact it might have on the evolution of this science in the U. S. for many years to come, were outlined to you fully in a letter from Dr. Robert A. Millikan dated July 3, 1943. . . .

"Will the United States be forever penalized because official meteorology in this country can neither comprehend basic scientific truths nor evaluate evidence of their successful application?"

What heritage had Professor Rossby left to the United States? "His followers are unable to progress weather forecasting because Rossby's basic premises, on which they work, are invalid. . . . Since his decease, the Weather Bureau still clings to these methods. Thus the United States literally and figuratively has placed it weather forecasting bets on a dead horse."