Science in 1900 London: The Royal Meteorological Society

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Arthur H. Beavan continued his survey of science in Imperial London, published in 1901, with this discussion of the Royal Meteorological Society:

Of recent growth is the Royal Meteorological Society, Great George Street, Westminster, founded for the purpose of encouraging every kind of scientific investigation of the earth's atmosphere and its phenomena.

This Society must not be confounded with the Meteorological Council, a Government Department in Victoria Street, W., whose penny weather reports, obtainable at the bookstalls of the railway termini, are on the whole reliable, 80 percent of the predictions proving correct in every detail.

Many people, however, are under the impression that the Council have the means of prophesying with certainty a long way ahead.

This is a mistake.

Says Lieutenant Baillie, R.N., the Marine Superintendent, "It is absolutely impossible for any one in the wide world to foretell what kind of a winter we are going to have. Any statements made of this kind are purely the result of guess-work. They must be so of necessity...

We do not profess, and never have claimed, to make forecasts relating to any period long ahead. Our province does not lie beyond a forecast for the ensuing twenty-four hours, and, even as it is, there are in some conditions of weather such complex distributions of pressure that it is next to impossible to say with any certainty what may happen in the next six hours."

Next: Scientific London in 1900: The Institution of Electrical Engineers