White Bluffs Spokesman

Radio Does Not
Affect Weather

Radio broadcasting, however much it may be affected by atmospheric conditions, in no way influences the weather, Says Dr. W. J. Humphreys, of the United States Weather Bureau.
Therefore, he points out, suppression of the radio, many appeals for which are received by Weather Bureau officials on the score of its adverse effect on the climate, would prevent neither droughts nor floods.
Some of the pleas for abolishing the radio are based on the supposition that wireless broadcasting burns up the water vapor of the air, thus causing disastrous droughts. Others apparently are inspired by a belief that radio gives rise to excessive precipitation, which ends in a flood.
The fallacy of both these ideas is apparent from a careful analysis of the way nature makes rain. Rain, Doctor Humphreys explains, is caused by (1) evaporation of water, which depends on the temperature of the evaporating water, on the area of the evaporating surface, on wind velocity, and on the dryness of the air, and (2), condensation of water vapor, which depends on the presence of excessively small particles of sea salt, land dust, or other substances that take up water vapor, and on an adequate cooling of the vapor.
Obviously, Doctor Humphreys observes, radio can have no effect on any of these factors that enter into evaporation of water from the earth's surface or into the condensation of atmospheric vapor. Attributing drouths and floods to radio, in his opinion, is just another instance of the common human habit of ascribing a little understood occurrence to something that is even more mysterious.