Canada: EXTERNAL AFFAIRS: Storm Lookout

In the vast wastes above the Arctic Circle, where much of the world’s weather is generated, Canada has only two weather stations equipped for long-range forecasting and the U.S. has only three (at Thule in Greenland, at Barrow and Kotzebue, in Alaska). To achieve a closer study and better forecasting, Canada and the U.S. joined last week in a plan for more observation posts.

Reconstruction Minister Clarence Decatur Howe announced that within the next three years, nine new weather stations for long-range forecasting will be built above the Arctic Circle. Canadians will be in charge of operating them, but the U.S. will pay an unspecified portion of the initial cost (an estimated $150,000 per station) and maintenance. At first the U.S. will also provide most of the trained personnel. Though Howe did not say so, Canadians guessed that this was the first action to implement the new U.S.-Canada defense agreement (TIME, Feb. 24).

The new stations will be more than just weather eyes. Their studies (plus practical flying tests such as U.S. Army B-29 crews are now making in the Arctic) will determine whether or not commercial airliners (and, of course, bombers) can fly over the Arctic to Europe and the Far East. Eventually some of the stations will be equipped with radar which can search out and plot the path of distant storms, and incidentally can be used for military observation posts if the need arises.

The new stations will be located somewhere in the frozen splash of islands north and west of Arctic Bay (see map). Only two of them have been pinpointed yet. The headquarters station will be at Winter Harbor on Melville Island and will be in operation by next August. The other will be still further north—700 miles from the North Pole—at Ellesmere Island’s Eureka Sound. It will be set up probably in April. Exploratory parties will recommend sites for the other seven stations later.

Lest the new stations rouse up sensitive Russia, Minister Howe held out an offer of help. He did not know how many weather stations Russia has in its own Arctic regions (she had 137 in 1940). But he hoped that some day Canada would be able to interchange the new Arctic weather information with the U.S.S.R. in the same way the two countries now exchange general weather reports.