Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 12 · column 3 of 5 · from the scan, no model involved
Th'^je 'enjoying (his week’s mild weather may be inclined to agree with Dr. Donald L. Gilman of the NationaV Weather Service who says that the eastern United States will be warmer than average this winter.
Gilman is basing his prediction on1; information gathered by weather balloons, satellites, shlps-at sea and the shifting patterns of the high, westerly jet streams. It was those ships at sea that discovered that there were unusually warm waters along the equator in the Pacific Ocean. The waters, found in a narrow strip between Hawaii and Fiji, are 5 to 7 degrees warmer than usual. This pool of warm water, occurring only eight times in the past 40 years, has already resulted in (he hurricane that struck Hawaii earlier this month, and Gilman said that the effect for the east coast will be a wetter than usual winter as well as a warmer one.
Gilman’s prediction flies in the face of the Old Fanner’s Almanac, which makes predictions every year based on natural phenomena like sunspots, volcanic dust and wooly worms, which were found by Almanac readers to be woolier, more abundant, and blacker this year.
The wooly worm watchers at the Almanac foresee a winter of "incredible” cold, with temperatures 5 to 8 degrees colder than average.
But whatever side you pick, you have a good chance of being right. Gilman acknowledged that no prediction has much better than a 50-50 chance of hitting the mark. Nevertheless, he has fearlessly forecast a 60 to 65 percent chance of a mild winter.
Whom to believe? The Rappahannock News, with the help of the National Park Servict plans to keep abreast of temperatures and rainfall at the end of each month, comparing the figures with those from last year at the same time to see if this winter runs warmer or colder than normal. Since we have no local weather station, we’ll use statistics from Big Meadow, recorded by the Park Service. While temperatures and precipitation will be different from Rappahannock’s, the statistics will answer our question—who is right—the wooly worms or the weather service.
77.0%