Synoptic Analysis, Prognosis and Forecasting (continued)

My memory suggests that Ralph Holmes was the leader of the CAO in 1946. I recall that John Lillywhite, Neil McRae, Reg Clarke, Steve Lloyd, Henry Phillpot and I worked shifts to cover the period from about 6 am to 10.30 pm seven days a week. Fred Leake, Paddy Chapman and some ex-WAAAFs plotted the information on the mean sea level and upper charts which we analysed and from which we produced prognostic charts. The charts were encoded and transmitted by teleprinter in a series of five-figure groups. We analysed the charts each three hours from 3 am to 9 pm and upper air charts once a day.

We each had our own style of analysis and prognosis and I well remember Reg Clarke and I having vigorous discussions on the merits of our differing ideas. These discussions took place during the brief periods when shifts overlapped.

Pat Squires, a brilliant research meteorologist and member of the 1937 forecasting course was an original member of AMFA established in Melbourne in the early 1940s. He was later joined by Max Cassidy and Henry Phillpot. Pat had been posted to Mascot aerodrome on finishing his forecasters' course but did not find it easy to adapt to the routine of providing forecasts for aviation in the absence of adequate information. After working with our RAAF Command meteorological section in Brisbane in 1945 he resigned from the Bureau to join the Radiophysics Section of CSIR.

Bureau of Meteorology