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Magic on the Stand. Nobody talks a client's language better than Dr. Irving P. Krick, 50, onetime Caltech meteorologist who started the first private weather firm in Denver in 1938. A leading rainmaker as well as a hail-halter (TIME, May 20), Krick now serves 200 companies, 260 radio stations and the Mexican Department of Agriculture. As a controversial proponent of really long-range predictions, Krick insists that daily weather can be foretold as far ahead as several years. His most famous forecast: a magic burst of sunshine for the inaugural committee just as President Eisenhower stepped onto the reviewing stand last January. Krick's system ("Do they think I use tea leaves?") is based on a theory that weather repeats itself in wavelike patterns, plus a newly rented (for $50,000 a year) Remington Rand Univac computer. By feeding vast globs of 60-year-old data into his Univac, Krick accurately forecast the inaugural sunshine 17 days ahead of time; the U.S. Weather Bureau refused to predict more than five days in advance.
To some, Weatherman Krick was merely lucky, but he and his colleagues insist that their fast-growing young business, financed by industry's millions, is making great strides in the art of weather forecasting. In Hartford, Travelers Insurance Co.'s Meteorologist Dr. Thomas F. Malone has been working on an "odds system" of reporting, which tells radio listeners the precise odds on climate changes ("rain today: 6 out of 10") in contrast to the usual vague predictions. And even a small enterpriser like Houston's John C. Freeman Jr., 37, president of two-year-old Gulf Consultants, can make an important contribution. Two months ago Freeman completed a TV-sized electronic tide-telling machine, claims that it predicted a 10.7-ft. tide at Cameron, La. well in advance of Hurricane Audrey. Actual height of the tide: 10.4 ft.