JB’s Journal: A Good Way to Never Shiver Again

A Good Way to Never Shiver Again

It was a quiet day at NWS at 11 West Oxmoor Road. That is until the mailman came by. He delivered us a thick 11×14 brown Kraft envelope.

We opened it and it was about a 10-page document from some gentlemen who said they were local engineers. They had made elaborate line drawings showing a long row of huge windmills lined up across the U.S./Canadian border. They insisted that when they were activated they would blow all of the cold air back into Canada and Alaska. They wanted our approval and then they were going to submit the plan to the U.S. government explaining it would save U.S. citizens millions of dollars in heating bills.

We sat around and discussed it for an hour or two and all of us wound up laughing our heads off. There is no way in the world that could be accomplished. Besides, what would the Canadians say if they started feeling 25 below temperatures coming up from the South.

Our boss decided to repackage it and mail it to our southern regional office in Ft. Worth to see their reaction. Their reaction was absolute zero. We never heard another word.

We got a surprising amount of crank mail in those years. So much so that we had set up a thick file called that.

This is the third in a series of stories about some of my very strange experiences in my 32 years in the U.S.W. B. and National Weather Service—all at the same station.

Category: Alabama's Weather, Met 101/Weather History