Meteorological Office Routine

The RAAF aeradio staff provided us with a bundle of weather reports from Australia which we plotted on a mean sea-level weather chart together with the reports from Papua and New Guinea collected from the AWA office. The observations were plotted with a twin-nibbed pen enabling use of blue ink for some figures and symbols and red for others. We then analysed the chart, delineating the isobaric pattern and noting significant areas of cloud and rain. We attempted to locate cold fronts which we delineated by blue lines although the plotted observations did not seem to fit the frontal model about which we had learnt on our training course.

We plotted no upper air charts at that time because there were few observations of upper winds and none of temperature and humidity in the upper air. Upper winds were observed by pilot balloon theodolite only at Port Moresby and Salamaua in Papua-New Guinea and at a network of stations in Australia including Townsville and Cooktown. A problem with pilot balloon observations was that the balloon was sometimes obscured in or behind cloud or haze. This usually meant lack of wind data at higher levels.

Bureau of Meteorology