Prophet

"The sky tomorrow," declared Manhattan's WOR weatherman, "will be cloudy and overcast." Then he added, "or, as the French would put it, triste."

Most radio weather news is read directly from the teletype in brief, dry spells at intervals throughout the day. But not the nightly (11:25 p.m.) comments of WOR's Nemo.* Nemo reads the U.S. Weather Bureau prediction, then follows it with a scientifically sound but slightly rhapsodic analysis of his own. By last week he had attracted thousands of enthusiastic listeners.

The voice of Nemo belongs to a studio announcer (Phil Tonken), but the words come from 68-year-old Charles S. Partridge, who is a prophet by avocation. Partridge is a bashful, thermometer-straight, sparse-haired little old gentleman who makes his living as a copyreader for the Wall Street Journal. Ever since he was a boy in Selma, Ala., Partridge has had a countryman's healthy interest in the weather. About 25 years ago he decided to get a scientific background. For five years he visited the Weather Bureau every day, and read hundreds of meteorology books.

By the time World War II came along, Partridge, already a respected amateur weather prophet, turned pro. The Coast Guard offered him a special commission as a meteorologist and he became, at 64, one of the oldest lieutenants (jg) in the service. In 1946, when WOR went to the Weather Bureau for a likely station weatherman, the Bureau promptly suggested Partridge.

The Bureau's admiration for Partridge is reciprocated. He would "never go against the Weather Bureau," but once in a long while he does blue-pencil official forecasts that strike him as debatable.

The Partridge analyses are liberally flavored with allusions to the Bible, history, mythology and fiction (Gilbert & Sullivan and the Pickwick Papers are great favorites). Sometimes he personifies the elements (a lagging raincloud is a "queenly tragedienne, making a majestic exit into the wings"). Sometimes literal-minded listeners write him long, cross, reproving letters.

By & large, Nemo is an optimist: a heavy flood will bring forth a dissertation on the raindrop ("a masterpiece of jewel-like workmanship"), and "green sky is a double delight . . . beautiful to look upon and always suggesting fair weather." Even the Big Snow of '47 left him undismayed. After it was all over, he found it "fair, COLD, SPARKLING, STIMULATING, PERFECT! Dazzling white snow, sky of blue!"

* No kin to the hero of Slumberland or of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. A station executive thought it was a fine name because, spelled backward, it is "omen." It is also the Latin word for "nobody."

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