Irving P. Krick

Irving P. Krick (December 20, 1906 – June 20, 1996) was an American meteorologist and inventor, the founding professor of Department of Meteorology at California Institute of Technology (1933–1948), one of the U.S. Air Force meteorologists who provided forecasts for the Normandy Landings in 1944, a controversial pioneer of long-term forecasting and cloud seeding, and "a brilliant American salesman" who in 1938 started the first private weather business in the United States.

Early years

Krick was born in San Francisco in 1906. He attended college at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, achieving a bachelor's degree in physics. However, his first career aspiration was music. Krick was an accomplished pianist and pursued music professionally but found it financially unrewarding. While still in his early twenties he worked at the radio station and at a stock brokerage – until the Wall Street crash of 1929. Finally, working for an airline and advice from his brother-in-law, Horace Byers, an MIT graduate, helped him find his true interest in weather.

Caltech Around 1930, he began studying at the California Institute of Technology in the Department of Aeronautics, which provided only a few courses in meteorology, notably by Beno Gutenberg (atmospheric structure) and Theodore von Kármán (aeronautics), Krick's advisors in his doctoral studies. Caltech offered the first dedicated meteorology class in the 1933–34 season. Krick made his name known by a controversial paper asserting that the 1933 crash of USS Akron was a direct consequence of a mistaken forecast by the Weather Bureau. Krick's paper was instrumental to von Kármán's work explaining the actual cause of Akron disaster; he was also instrumental in determining the cause of the USS Macon crash in 1935. These publications brought Krick to the attention of the U.S. Army Air Corps; Krick befriended future Air Corps chief Hap Arnold, then a colonel stationed at March Field not far from Caltech.

Krick completed his doctoral degree in 1934 and remained at Caltech as an instructor. In December 1949 Krick suggested cloud seeding without resorting to airborne devices; his proposal employed ground-based smoke generators dispersing vaporized silver iodide. A single smoke dispenser set, asserted Krick, could be moved by two wheelbarrows; it theoretically provided cloud-seeding particles for an area of . Tests demonstrated a fourfold increase in precipitation. By 1951 his cloud-seeding business had 120 employees and had been hired to seed clouds over in the western United States as well as parts of Mexico and San Salvador.

However, the American meteorological establishment opposed his practice, asserting his methods of cloud seeding were bogus and the weather could not be forecast for more than five days in the future. Krick decided to offer his long term forecasting to the Weather Bureau, but they too did not believe in his methods, so he started a private business. He successfully proved his basic premises, making a substantial profit from forecasts and weather making. Krick's practice caught the eye of many famous figures, and he was hired to forecast the weather for presidential inaugurations and movie shoots. He garnered attention in 1957 when his prediction of sunny weather for President Eisenhower's second inauguration, made 17 days before the event, came true. remaining with that company as chairman emeritus until his 1996 death from heart failure.