Chapter 938 – Meteorological Work

"The Forestry Department needs manpower but has none; needs equipment but has none. At our current production scale—let alone future needs—the wood products factory simply cannot function without three to five thousand workers. I've already reported this to Director Zhan. He's agreed to strengthen production support for the Forestry Department going forward, with priority allocation of all materials."

"That's more like it. The wood processing plants where I used to work all had over a thousand employees, and that was with electrified production. Look at us now: steam power, skeleton crew, and half our workers only started in the past few days." Hai Lin was growing dizzy from the drink and didn't dare have more. He had an early meeting tomorrow, so he called his life secretary to bring him a bowl of rice.

Wu Kuangming also stopped drinking and asked for some rice. While eating mapo tofu made without the minced pork, he glanced at Hai Lin's life secretary and said: "You lucky dog. Your secretary is pretty and cooks well." Wu Kuangming himself hadn't purchased a life secretary this time around. His lottery number had come up too late, and he'd looked down on the B and C-grade options. He was still eating at the cafeteria.

"Hehe, you should buy one too. Even if you don't sleep together, it's nice having someone to cook for you." Hai Lin suggested.

"Hmm, I'll visit the maid school tomorrow and pick one who cooks well. Ever since Big Mama Cao stopped doing the cooking, the cafeteria food has become unbearable. Only those animals on the Executive Committee can tolerate it." Wu Kuangming patted the dining table for emphasis, then suddenly exclaimed: "Holy crap—even your dining table is huanghuali wood?"

Hai Lin nodded casually: "Only this table. Everything else isn't. Too many transmigrators recognize this wood—using it for furniture is too conspicuous. The rest is all made of 'polei' wood."

Wu Kuangming smiled. "You're too cautious. In the old timeline huanghuali was precious, but here on Hainan there's plenty. How many departments are using rosewood and huanghuali furniture now? Never mind Southeast Asian hardwood resources—even domestic ones haven't reached exhaustion. You could build yourself a villa and it'd be fine."

"That's not the right way to think about it." Hai Lin shook his head. "No matter what, hardwood is premium goods in this timeline."

After dinner, his life secretary brought them farm coffee, Limu Mountain oolong tea, and farm-produced cigars. Under Wu Nanhai's tireless advocacy, quite a few smoking transmigrators had taken up cigars—they were at least healthier than cigarettes. The two puffed on their cigars and chatted, steering away from work to discuss women. They began with the Liu San and Wuyun Hua divorce case, moved on to Wuyun Hua's looks and figure, and from there to other female transmigrators. A small argument erupted over who was the acknowledged beauty among female transmigrators. Wu Kuangming championed Liu Shuixin, Liu Zheng's wife. Hai Lin insisted that Cheng Xinxin—Wu Di's sister-in-law from the finance department—was the prettiest. Then they shifted to recent rumors about a certain female transmigrator and a certain male transmigrator—though "rumors" was technically inaccurate, since both were single. Still, romance between transmigrators was happening for the first time.

After a torrent of meaningless chatter, Wu Kuangming said his goodbyes and departed. He walked home swaying, thoughts drifting to tomorrow's Manufacturing Supervision meeting. He needed to follow up on the piping for the steam drying kiln—the rejection rate at the fire kilns had grown intolerable.

Lost in thought, suddenly the pager at his waist beeped with a text message. He opened it and found a typhoon warning from the Lingao Weather Station: Typhoon Number One of the year had passed through the Dongsha Islands area and was moving toward northern Qiong and southwestern Guangdong, with landfall possible near Qiongshan, Chengmai, Lingao, Danzhou, or the Leizhou Peninsula by tomorrow evening...

Wu Kuangming's heart lurched. Half his drunkenness vanished instantly, and he hurried toward the Forestry Department office.

After seeing Wu Kuangming off, Hai Lin took a bath with his life secretary's assistance and lay naked on the bed. He thought about tomorrow's work and jotted notes in a notebook. By the time he finished, his life secretary had also bathed and was wearing a silk robe, slowly climbing into bed.

"Why so many clothes? Strip!" Hai Lin commanded, tossing the notebook onto the nightstand and switching off his pager to avoid interruptions.

The maid quickly removed her sleepwear. She had just lain on her back when she received Hai Lin's next order:

"Get on all fours." Hai Lin commanded while switching off the lamp. The life secretary's body glowed faintly pale in the dim light. He grunted and immediately transformed into a wolf. Even while thrusting vigorously, his mind wandered: After this batch arrives from Shandong, I'll have to visit the maid school again. If there's a slim-waisted, long-legged tall girl, I'll definitely buy another one. What's the point of transmigrating if I don't build a powerful harem?

While the Haitian sailed north toward Shandong, the 1631 typhoon season arrived on schedule. In early June, the first typhoon struck Dongsha Island. The engineering team mining guano there suffered significant losses: one steam launch sank; two empty hundred-ton Fujianese junks waiting to load guano capsized against the reefs. The dock crane collapsed, a section of pier was damaged, and over ten people died or went missing.

The typhoon's passage over Dongsha Island granted Hainan several hours of warning. The weather station there immediately transmitted a telegram after the storm passed. Within three hours, via wireless and wired telegraph, every Senate institution across the entire island had entered typhoon alert status. Shortly thereafter, the weather radar aboard the Fengcheng also issued warnings that the typhoon was approaching.

June marked the beginning of peak typhoon season for the entire Chinese coast. During this period in this timeline, ocean-going vessels essentially remained in port. Foreign trade ground to a virtual halt. But for the transmigrators, who depended heavily on shipping, suspended maritime traffic meant their economy and industrial system would suffer.

Since D-Day, even during the most typhoon-plagued months of July and August, Senate ships had continued sailing. Fortunately, at that time their vessels didn't need to make long voyages. The farthest north they went was the Pearl River estuary; most shipping remained within the Gulf of Tonkin and around Hainan, allowing them to dock and shelter in time if bad weather approached.

They had also been fortunate—the Little Ice Age had significantly reduced both the number and intensity of typhoons, and their most vulnerable year, 1629, had seen an unusually small number of storms strike Lingao. Nature had spared them at their moment of greatest weakness.

When they had first chosen Lingao as their base, it was precisely because northern Hainan was the part of the island least affected by typhoons. But now, with the Senate's flag flying over all of Hainan and the Pearl River estuary, they had to confront the troubles typhoons brought.

The Senate had established a main weather station at Gaoshan Ridge, with seven or eight substations scattered around Lingao, all connected by wired telegraph. Several observers had been trained, creating a preliminary meteorological observation network covering all of Lingao County.

From the main station at Gaoshan Ridge to the substations throughout the county, various meteorological equipment and instruments had been installed—both brought from the old timeline and manufactured locally in Lingao. These ranged from simple barometers, thermometers, anemometers, and hygrometers to handheld electronic weather instruments.

Ships brought from the old timeline also carried basic meteorological observation equipment. By combining these for daily observations—even with only basic readings of barometric pressure, temperature, wind direction, wind speed, dew point, and cloud cover—they could roughly draw weather maps and perform data analysis. The daily forecasts now issued by the Gaoshan Ridge Weather Station for transmigrators only were produced this way, though their accuracy remained quite low, with precipitation forecast accuracy below thirty percent.

But in the view of transmigrators with meteorological knowledge, the Gaoshan Ridge Weather Station's value was limited. Its main function was training personnel. At best, the station was equivalent to an old-timeline basic observation station—primarily accumulating experience, training staff, and improving instruments.

This wasn't because the Senate was stingy about investing in weather forecasting. The meteorological satellites, weather radar, and supercomputers required for modern forecasting were far beyond their economic and industrial capabilities. Even purely consumable items like radiosondes couldn't be used the way they had been in the old timeline.

Gaoshan Ridge Weather Station had no satellite imagery, no weather radar, no radiosondes, and certainly no large computers for meteorological calculations. The only way to achieve long-term weather forecasting was the traditional method: establish a vast observation network with large numbers of stations and base stations. Especially in extreme climate source regions: Siberia, the Arctic, and the Pacific Ocean.

Via radio, these stations would transmit local conditions to the main station. Weather maps would be drawn by hand. The main station would then process the collected data on paper. Before satellite imagery existed, this had been the only effective method of weather forecasting.

However, nationwide deployment for data collection and forecasting was impossible—at least not achievable within ten years. Therefore, the Executive Committee's directive for the weather station was simple: ensure safe maritime navigation, provide typhoon forecasts, support agricultural production, and forecast northern cold snaps.

The weather radar aboard the Fengcheng could make fairly accurate forecasts for typhoons making landfall in northern Hainan, but to forecast typhoons affecting the Chinese coast, observation stations had to be positioned at typhoon breeding grounds and along major paths. Setting up a station on Guam was currently beyond their capabilities. The Science and Technology Department planned to establish stations at Dongsha, Xisha, the Nansha Islands, and other locations. Additionally, the consulate in Batavia would perform weather data collection, attempting to forecast typhoons affecting the Chinese coast.

As for forecasting cold snaps—that required observation stations along cold snap paths on the mainland. The Science and Technology Department planned to establish stations in Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangdong, and other places where they already had personnel stationed. They were also preparing to set up stations on Jeju Island and in Manchuria after Operation Engine concluded. This would provide some advance warning of approaching cold snaps.