Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [31]
Five days later, Morton notified Chief Harrington that he had decided to slash Abbe’s annual salary by 25 percent, to $3,000 from $4,000, “with the understanding that proficiency in forecasting will be necessary for the continuance of his services and the perpetuation of his pay.” The man in charge of gauging his proficiency was to be Major Dunwoody, head of the forecast-verification unit, and one of that all-too-common category of men who feast on boot polish and see the failures of others as stepping-stones toward their own success. Dunwoody had been one of General Hazen’s most ardent critics, objecting at every opportunity to Hazen’s investment in scientific research. He would turn up again years later, in Cuba, doing his best to obstruct the efforts of Cuban meteorologists to transmit warnings about the hurricane of 1900 as it advanced through the Caribbean.
Dunwoody was a snake, and Chief Harrington knew it. At last, Harrington lost his patience. In a letter to Morton dated April 30, 1895, Harrington wrote: “Dunwoody is a selfish intriguer and a source of discord in the Weather Bureau. I request that the President recall him.”
Instead, Morton fired Harrington. On July 1, 1895, Morton replaced him with Isaac’s friend and fellow contestant, Willis L. Moore, only thirty-nine years old but already a veteran of nearly two decades of service within the Signal Corps and the Weather Bureau. It was an appointment that would shape in dangerous ways the bureau’s ability to respond to the 1900 storm.
Moore tightened headquarters’ control over the bureau’s far-flung empire. He insisted on even stricter verification of forecasts. Dunwoody’s verification unit kept busy, and filed a report on each man to Moore every six months. To further sharpen the bureau’s skill, Moore insisted every observer do practice forecasts for a location outside his own territory so that on any given day a number of forecasters would try predicting the weather for the same city. This generated a lot of tension, but Moore believed tension was good. The system, he told Congress, helped explain why Weather Bureau employees had to be committed to insane asylums more often than employees of any other federal agency.
He said this with pride.
Moore also made himself guardian of the bureau’s moral health, and in this role claimed broad jurisdiction. Early in 1900, in the midst of rising anticigarette sentiment that condemned smoking not for killing people but for making them stupid, Moore banished cigarettes from the bureau’s weather stations. The Christian Endeavor Union of Washington promptly congratulated him. Moore, greedy for any scrap of praise, replied that he personally had dismissed bureau officials “purely on the ground that their moral character was such as to bring discredit upon the Weather service.” Smoking was a moral blight. “In several cases,” Moore crowed, “we have been compelled to take action for the reduction or removal of observers in charge of station for indolence, forgetfulness, and failure to render reports promptly, where I was satisfied that shattered physical condition and mental impairment were due to the excessive use of cigarettes. The order will be obeyed.”
Moore never missed a chance to burnish the reputation of the Weather Bureau or to boost his own political stature. War provided a prime opportunity. By early 1898, the nation’s bloodlust was high. The explosion of the battleship Maine, its true cause a mystery, had sent the nation tumbling irrevocably toward war with Spain. Clearly America’s most important weapon would be its Navy. “I knew,” Moore wrote, “that many armadas in olden days had been defeated, not by the enemy, but by the weather and that probably as many ships had been sent to the bottom of the sea by storms as had been destroyed by the fire of enemy fleets.”
He reported his concerns to James Wilson, who by then had replaced Morton as secretary of agriculture. Wilson arranged a meeting between himself, Moore, and President William McKinley. Moore spread