Francis Reichelderfer

Francis Wilton Reichelderfer (August 6, 1895 – January 26, 1983), also known as “Reich”, presided over a revolutionary era in the history of the Weather Bureau. From 1938 to 1963, Reich guided the organization through World War II and brought modern technology to weather forecasting. His greatest strengths were comprehending where meteorology should be going, acting to move in that direction, and then attracting and keeping the talent to make it happen.

Francis was born in Harlan, Indiana in 1895, the son of a Methodist minister. He worked his way through college, rising at 3:30 a.m. to stoke the furnaces and wait tables in a women’s dormitory. He did not even begin his career as a meteorologist, graduating in 1916 from Northwestern University with a degree in chemical engineering.

Francis began a series of experiences and career appointments in the U.S. Navy. During World War I, he became a naval reserve officer in 1916 and was selected for the first class of military personnel for training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorological school. Afterwards, he was assigned as naval aerographer (a Navy term for meteorologist) and sent to Nova Scotia to brief submarine patrol pilots on weather conditions.

But “Reich” was a man of action and volunteered to become a naval aviator. As such, he not only thought about observing and forecasting the weather, but also realized that understanding it was a matter of life and death for the aviation community. He flew in dirigibles, fixed wing aircraft, and even as a competitive hot air balloonist. Because of his meteorological and aviation experience, he became Chief of Navy Aerology in 1922 and served in that capacity until 1928. He worked in a corner of the main Weather Bureau offices in Washington, D.C., drawing up maps, comparing them to official forecasts, and pondering the weather.

The Norwegian Bergen School of Meteorology attracted his attention, and soon Reichelderfer became one of the first American meteorologists to espouse its approach to predicting weather. This approach relied on physical principles for analyzing weather fronts and air masses and not simply weather observations. The Navy assigned Reichelderfer to Bergen, Norway, in 1931 for further studies in air mass and frontal analysis. Following this assignment, he had a tour of duty at sea on the battleship Oklahoma, then back to the Navy dirigible service, and finally to sea as executive officer of the battleship Utah.

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Wikipedia