Chapter 170: Meteorological Work

“The forestry department has no personnel, no equipment. Logically, with the current production scale and the various production guarantees in the future, the woodworking factory would be impossible to run without three to five thousand people. I’ve already reported this to Director Zhan, and he has agreed to strengthen the production guarantee of the forestry department in the future, with priority allocation of various materials.”

“That’s more like it. In the past, which woodworking factory didn’t have thousands of people, and that was with electrified production. Now, it’s steam power, with so few people, and half the workers only joined the factory in the last few days.” Hai Lin was a little dizzy from drinking and didn’t dare to drink anymore. He had to get up early for a meeting tomorrow, so he called his life secretary and asked her to serve him a bowl of rice.

Wu Kuangming also stopped drinking and asked for some rice. He ate the mapo tofu without minced meat and glanced at Hai Lin’s life secretary, saying, “You lucky bastard. Your secretary is pretty, and her cooking is good.” Wu Kuangming hadn’t bought a life secretary this time. His number was late in the lottery, and he didn’t like the B-class and C-class maids. He was still eating at the canteen.

“Hehe, you should buy one too. Even if you don’t sleep with her, it’s good to have someone cook for you,” Hai Lin advised.

“Hmm, I’ll go to the maid school tomorrow and pick one who’s good at cooking. The food at the canteen has been getting worse and worse since Granny Cao stopped cooking. Only those beasts in the Executive Committee can still stomach it,” Wu Kuangming said, patting the dining table. He was surprised. “Damn it, you even have a huanghuali wood dining table?”

Hai Lin nodded and said nonchalantly, “Only this table in my house is made of huanghuali wood. The others are not. Many Elders recognize this kind of wood, and it’s too eye-catching to use for furniture. The other furniture is made of ‘polai’ wood.”

Wu Kuangming smiled and said, “You’re too cautious. In the original timeline, huanghuali wood was valuable. Now, there’s plenty of this wood in Hainan. Are there few pieces of furniture made of zitan wood and huanghuali wood in the various departments now? Not to mention the hardwood resources of Southeast Asia, even the domestic ones are not yet exhausted. You could build a villa with it, no problem.”

“You can’t say that,” Hai Lin shook his head. “No matter what, hardwood is a high-grade product in this timeline.”

After dinner, the life secretary brought them farm coffee, Limu Mountain oolong tea, and farm cigars. Under Wu Nanhai’s tireless promotion, many smoking Elders had started smoking cigars—after all, cigars were a bit healthier than cigarettes. The two of them smoked their cigars, puffing away and chatting. They no longer discussed work topics and started talking about women. They first talked about Liu San and Wu Yunhua’s divorce case, then about Wu Yunhua’s appearance and figure, and from there, they moved on to other female Elders. There was a small debate about who was the recognized flower among the female Elders. Wu Kuangming thought it was Liu Zheng’s wife, Liu Shuixin, while Hai Lin insisted that Cheng Xinxin, the sister-in-law of Wu Di from the finance department, was the most beautiful. Then they talked about the recent gossip between a female Elder and a male Elder—strictly speaking, it wasn’t gossip, because both were single. But it was the first time a romance had occurred between Elders.

After some meaningless empty talk, Wu Kuangming took his leave. He swayed as he walked back, thinking about the manufacturing director’s work meeting tomorrow. He had to urge the delivery of the pipes for the steam drying kiln; the rejection rate of the fire kilns was too high now.

As he was lost in thought, the PHS on his waist suddenly beeped—a text message had arrived. He opened it and saw a typhoon warning issued by the Lingao Meteorological Observatory: the first typhoon of the year had already passed through the Dongsha Islands and was moving towards northern Qiongzhou and southwestern Guangdong. It might make landfall in the areas of Qiongshan, Chengmai, Lingao, Danzhou, or the Leizhou Peninsula tomorrow evening…

Wu Kuangming was shocked, and his drunkenness was instantly halved. He hurried to the forestry department office.

Hai Lin saw Wu Kuangming off, took a bath with the help of his life secretary, and lay naked on the bed. He thought about tomorrow’s work and jotted it down in a notebook. By now, the life secretary had also taken a bath and was wearing a silk nightgown. She slowly climbed onto the bed.

“Why are you wearing so much? Take it all off!” Hai Lin ordered, tossing the notebook onto the bedside table and turning off his PHS so as not to spoil the mood.

The maid quickly took off her nightgown. As soon as she lay down on her back, she received a new command from Hai Lin:

“Lie on your stomach.” Hai Lin ordered as he turned off the light. The life secretary’s body was slightly pale in the dim light. He grunted and immediately transformed into a werewolf. As he vigorously thrust, he was still thinking, “After the people from Shandong arrive, I’ll have to go to the maid school again. If there are any tall girls with thin waists and long legs, I’ll have to buy another one. If I don’t build a powerful harem, this transmigration will have been for nothing.”

While the Haitian was heading north to Shandong, the typhoon season of 1631 arrived on time. In early June, the first typhoon struck Dongsha Island. The engineering team mining guano on the island suffered considerable losses: a large motorboat sank, and two empty hundred-ton-class Fuchuan ships waiting to be loaded with guano capsized and hit reefs. The crane on the pier collapsed, and a section of the trestle bridge was also lost. More than ten people were dead or missing.

The typhoon passing through Dongsha Island gave Hainan Island some warning time. The meteorological station stationed on Dongsha Island immediately sent a telegram after the typhoon passed. With the help of wireless and wired telegraph, less than 3 hours later, all the Senate’s institutions on Hainan Island entered a state of typhoon warning. Not long after, the weather radar on the Fengcheng also issued a warning that a typhoon was approaching.

June was the peak typhoon season along the entire coast of China. In this timeline, long-distance ships basically did not go to sea during this period. Foreign trade basically came to a complete standstill. But for the transmigrators, who were heavily dependent on shipping, stopping shipping meant that their economic and industrial systems would be in trouble.

Since D-Day, even in the most rampant typhoon months of July and August, the Senate’s ships had always been sailing at sea. Fortunately, their ships did not need to travel long distances at that time. The farthest their ships went north was to the Pearl River Estuary. Most of their shipping activities were carried out in the Gulf of Tonkin and around Hainan Island. Even if they encountered bad weather, they could still reach the shore in time to take shelter.

Of course, they were quite lucky—the number and scale of typhoons during the Little Ice Age had greatly decreased. And in their most vulnerable year, 1629, the number of typhoons that hit Lingao was surprisingly small, which saved them from the ravages of nature.

When they chose Lingao as their first base, it was also because they considered that the northern part of Qiongzhou was the least affected by typhoons on Hainan Island. But now, the Senate’s flag was flying over the entire Hainan Island and the Pearl River Estuary. The Senate had to face the troubles brought by typhoons.

The Senate set up a central meteorological station at Gaoshanling and seven or eight branch stations in various parts of Lingao. Wired telegraph lines were set up between the branch stations, and a number of observers were trained. This was the preliminary establishment of a meteorological observation network for the entire county of Lingao.

From the central station at Gaoshanling to the branch stations throughout the county, various meteorological equipment and instruments brought from the old timeline and self-made in Lingao were installed: from simple barometers, thermometers, anemometers, and hygrometers to handheld electronic meteorological observation instruments.

The ships brought from the old timeline also had basic meteorological observation equipment. By combining these for daily observation, even with only basic data on pressure, temperature, wind direction, wind speed, dew point temperature, and cloud cover, they could still roughly draw basic weather maps and conduct data analysis. The daily weather forecast issued by the Gaoshanling Meteorological Observatory only to the Elders was made in this way—of course, the accuracy was quite low, with the accuracy of light rain forecasts being less than 30%.

But in the eyes of the Elders who had some knowledge of meteorology, the Gaoshanling Meteorological Observatory was of little value. It mainly served as an educational tool for training meteorological personnel. The level of the meteorological station was at best a basic station from the old timeline. It was mainly for accumulating observation experience, training personnel, and improving instruments.

This was not because the Senate was unwilling to invest in weather forecasting—the meteorological satellites, weather radars, and supercomputers needed for modern weather forecasting were far beyond their economic and social capabilities. Even the purely consumable radiosondes could not be used as they were in the old timeline.

The Gaoshanling Meteorological Observatory had no satellite cloud images, no weather radar, no radiosondes, and no large computers for meteorological calculations. To achieve long-term weather forecasting, the only way was to follow the traditional method of establishing a meteorological observation network over a vast area, setting up a large number of observation stations and basic stations, especially in the source regions of extreme weather: Siberia, the Arctic, and the Pacific Ocean.

By transmitting the local weather conditions to the central station via radio, weather maps could be drawn by hand. The central station would then conduct analysis on the maps based on the meteorological data collected from the various observation stations. This was the only effective method of weather forecasting before satellite photos were available.

However, it was impossible to collect data and make forecasts by setting up stations throughout the country—at least not within ten years. Therefore, the order given to the meteorological station by the Executive Committee was: to ensure the safety of maritime navigation, to do a good job of typhoon forecasting, and to ensure agricultural production by forecasting low temperatures and cold waves in the north.

The weather radar on the Fengcheng could make quite accurate forecasts for typhoons landing in northern Qiongzhou, but to make typhoon forecasts for the coast of China, observation stations had to be set up in the source regions and main paths of typhoons. Setting up an observation station on Guam was currently beyond their capabilities. The Ministry of Science and Technology planned to set up observation stations on the Dongsha, Xisha, and Nansha Islands. At the same time, the consulate in Batavia would also collect weather data to try to make forecasts for typhoons affecting the coast of China.

As for the latter, forecasting cold waves required setting up observation stations on the necessary paths of cold waves on the mainland. The Ministry of Science and Technology planned to set up several observation stations in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Guangdong, where they already had expatriate personnel. They also planned to set up observation stations on Jeju Island and in the northeast after Operation Engine to provide some early warning for the arrival of cold waves.