 Man's Crying. CBS Radio, a division of the Columbia Broadcasting System, and its 217 affiliated stations presents the CBS Radio Workshop, Radio's Distinguished Series dedicated to man's imagination, the theater of the mind. Tonight from Hollywood, a graphic and dramatic account of one of nature's most terrifying phenomena, Storm, from the famous book by George Stewart, adapted and directed by William N. Ropeson with William Conrad as narrator. Steadily, the great sphere of the earth spun upon its axis and moved in its unvarying course around the sun. From far off Venus, a watcher of the skies, if such a one can be imagined to exist, viewed it as a more brilliant planet than any to be seen by us earthmen. It gave no sign that storms or men disturbed its tranquil round. Bright against the black of midnight or yellow in the dawn, the earth hung in the sky, unflickering and serene. San Francisco Weather Bureau, fair tonight and Wednesday, no change in temperature. Moderate Northwest winds, you're welcome. The same forecast, day after day, week after week. The junior meteorologists wanted to yell blizzards, thunder, lightning, and hurricanes. But as long as that high pressure area hung off the coast, it would be the same. Fair tonight and tomorrow, no change in temperature. This wasn't whether it was a bore and nothing on this morning's weather map could change it. Oh, there were storms, plenty of them, always somewhere else. Sylvia, an old friend, was now over Boston, dumping a heavy fall of snow before she swept on across the Atlantic. Felicia, poor thing, wasn't doing too well. By all indications, she would die in the fastnesses of the Northwest Territory. But Cornelia, the junior meteorologist, was proud of Cornelia. A big, full-bodied dowager of a storm, 400 miles at sea southeast of Dutch Harbor. He'd known all of them since birth, days ago in the far western reaches of the Pacific. And it was his private pleasure to give them names. His eyes swept across the map down the arc of the Aleutians and the islands of Japan. And then he saw something he hadn't noticed before, a ship halfway between the weather stations of Haridoyasima and Titijima had reported a barometric pressure of 1011. Yet by its position, it should have been 1012. The temperatures of the ship and the weather station showed too wide a divergence. The wind forces in the directions were at variance. Cold air from the tundras of Siberia had met warm air from the coral atolls of the Southern Ocean. So he re-rooted a section of the 1012 Isaver, drew a little ellipse like a football around the figure 1011. Mariah, this one shall be Mariah. A proud city, San Francisco, set upon hills, pearl gray in the winter sun, swept clean of smoke and dust but a steady wind from the sea. A city of towers and banners standing out stiff in the northwest wind. In the streets of the city, women clutched at their skirts and men at their hats in the invigorating sun-filled breeze and they greeted each other with sparkling smiles. Great weather we're having. What's life in a fellow? But out in the country, there was a drop in the last central valley. The grain and the grasses curled by drops ceased growing. And the well-to-do cattlemen ordered cotton seed meal with the Fresno mills. And in Tahama County, a not-so-well-to-do cattleman received a polite but firm letter from his bank. And an hour later, in the barn, they found his body hanging. Good morning, sir. Good morning, sir. Is the map ready? Almost, sir. The last report is just coming in over the teletype. Nice old storm developing there west of Japan. You mean Mariah? You named them too. Just to myself, sir. It must be nice to be new to the game. I used to do it when I first came to work here. Oh, you did? Yes, I called them mostly after heroes. I'd read about in history books, Hannibal and so forth. I remember General Lee developed into a terror, but Genghis Khan was a fizzler. I've been using girls' names ending in IA, but I'm nearly running out. There's Felicia over Hudson's Bay and Cornelia is still doing fine in the Gulf of Alaska. Where'd this Mariah come from? Incipient. Day before yesterday, north of Tida-Jean. She'll be watching. You know the old saying. What's that, sir? The Chinaman sneezing in Shinsi may set men to shoveling snow in New York City. They're watching. Half as large as the United States, she rolled across the Pacific at 1,000 miles a day. Yet nowhere did she touch land so fast and empty as the great ocean between the Aleutians and Midway Island. All over the top of the world rested unbroken darkness like a cap. Through that polar night, the flow of heat into outer space was like the steady drain of blood from an open wound. As the air thus grew colder and colder, it shrank toward the surface of the earth. Upon every square mile of snow-covered land and frozen sea, the air weighed more heavily with the passing of each sunless hour. Hey, Chief, look at the report from Coppermine this morning. What about it? 1032, up nine millibars from yesterday, and Fort Norman, 1035. That polar air mass is going to break out in Canada. Maybe yes, maybe no. Oh, there's no place else for it to go. And when it does, Mariah won't follow Cornelia and Felicia and the others into the Gulf of Alaska. Jokey, coming straight for the coast. Chief, it's rain in 48 hours and plenty of it. Well, maybe yes, maybe no. I'm sorry, Chief, I guess I got carried away. That's understandable. You haven't seen as many storms come across this map as I have. No, sir. But don't go throwing around in the 48-hour guesses. Storms are hussies, police in this part of the world. I've known lots of them. Storms, that is. You can't trust them 12 hours out of your sight. San Francisco, where are we? Hello, let me speak to somebody in authority, please. This is the Chief Forecaster speaking. This is Brownington Steamship Company. We got a ship in trouble. She just sent out an SOS. The Eureka related to us. What's the weather like out there? Can you give me her position? Not exactly. The Eureka said she was six hours away. What ship is it? The Byzantium. In that case, we have it. She made a weather report two hours ago. It must have been all right then. Just a minute, let me check. Well, for heaven's sakes, hurry. It's mostly a local crew. They've got wives and families in the Bay Area. We've got a notification. I understand. Here we are. The Byzantium reported she has a nine-point wind. That'll be about 50 miles an hour. It's going to get worse. An hour, it'll be blowing the whole gale. 60 miles an hour anyway. For another hour, it'll be even worse than that. We've got stuff to 70. It's a hurricane, then, a typhoon. Well, look here. There's no sense in panicking. It's not a hurricane, it's not a typhoon. It's a storm, a very big storm. Make that clear to your people and to the newspapers. The Byzantium will be through the worst of it in the next two hours. After that, it'll fall off. There'll be lots of wind for 12 hours and a heavy sea after that. I see. Well, isn't there anything you can do about it? I'm afraid not. We report the weather. We don't make it. Yes, of course. Thank you. Thanks very much. Well, then, sir, you're Mariah's a big girl now, a killer. From the Arctic islands and the ice flows of the Beaufort Sea, the Polar Air swept southward across the plains at 50 miles an hour, across Alberta and Saskatchewan. By noon at engulfed Edmonton, just before the winter sunset, Saskatoon and Calgary. At midnight, it crossed the border and invaded the United States. By daybreak, it had occupied much of Montana and North Dakota and was advancing on Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. But in San Francisco, the proud banners on the tall towers still streamed southeast in the winter sun. Continued fair today, no change in temperature. Got the map filled in, sir? Yes, sir. Just finishing. How's it look here this morning? Well, I said yesterday that it rained inside 48 hours. I say now, it'll rain inside a 24 hour. Pretty sure of that, eh? Positive. Let me have a look. Will Mariahs come a long way in five days? Yes, sir. Look at that cold front east of the Rockies, right out of Canada, just as I forecast. Did you forecast this, too? What's that, sir? Part of your cold front slipped west across Alaska, far south of Seattle. No, sir, I didn't expect that. Care to forecast the possibility of it continuing south? Well, sir, my guess is that Mariah will get here before it does. Son, in this game, you can't afford to guess. There are a lot of factors on this map that argue against rain. There's this cold front. There's the Pacific high. It's still has been for weeks. Oh, there's Mariah, and nothing's going to stop her. Cheap. Yes, righty. Chronicles don't know why they want the forecast. Tell them I'll have it for them in 10 minutes. You see, son, it's up to me. If I say that one word rain, the weather forecast won't be in the box at the bottom of the front page. It'll be in boxed car letters in the headlines. That single word will be the biggest news story in California. Thousands of people will change their plans because hundreds of businesses and industries will adjust to it. And if it doesn't rain. But it's going to. It has to. Would you like to take the responsibility of guaranteeing? But, sir. On the other hand, if I forecast fear and rain, that mistake might mean millions of dollars loss and the illness and the death of more people than the man likes to think about. Yes, sir. Of course, it's possible that the Pacific high will hold. And it's possible that the polar air will get here before Mariah does. But it's not probable. And we must forecast probable, not possible, whether. Righty. Get on the phone and order up storm warnings on the coast from Point Lorena to North Head. You, sir, and call a chronicle and tell them we'll have the complete forecast in five minutes. But tell them to set the headlines and get ready. It's rain. Rain. The load dispatcher of power and light was ready for the electric heaters that would be turned on against the chill and the lights that would burn later in the morning and earlier in the evening. Somewhere in his maze of high and low voltage wires, his powerhouses, and his dams, there would be trouble. But he was ready. Rain. The plant superintendent of the telephone company sent some extra men up along US 40 in case things went bad on the pass. Rain. The general manager of the railroad dispatched the assistant divisional engineer and the chief train master to immigrant gap in northern to take charge of track clearance in the pass. For rain on the coast, rain in the valley, rain in the mother load, meant snow on the pass. The pass, one of the five great gateways to California. The first covered wagons crossed the pass in 1844 from the high plateau of Nevada to the graphic valley of the Sacramento, where yet unsuspected, gold lay in the sands of foothill streams. 500 wagons crossed in 46, crossed safely. All but the last, the Donner party, the snow caught them. And the horror of their story has imprinted their name upon the pass and brood still over peak and canyon like a legend of Greek tragedy. But today, flaming streamliners glide between the snowy crags with 20th century ease. The transcontinental telephone carries chit chat and the closing of deals, the word of birth and death, and the jokes and tunes of radio through the high canyons and over the summits. The great steel towers of the power and light highline cut their wide path through the large pole pines in the Tamaracks as they march with metal feet across the mountain. And feeling its way more subtly, following the conchures of the convoluted land is US Highway 40, the all-weather road across the Sierra's, one of the five great mountain gateways to California. Far out at sea, the crippled freighter Byzantium, her ruddered jewelry rigged, made for Honolulu and repairs under a sunny sky. She had ridden out the storm, but she had lost her first officer overboard. Mariah was indeed the killer. And she announced her coming with a wave of pain. As she moved steadily shoreward, old lumberjack joints grown stiff in the dripping of redwood forests, twenched and throttled from Cape Disappointment to Point Arguello, overworked mothers winced with headaches. Nervins of leg stumps tingle. Old wounds of the argon and guadalcanal ached again. And a moving belt 150 miles before the rain, renewed torches prevailed in the hurt and maimed limbs of men. First, so fine was the rain that was as if the low-lying mist had merely swooped a little lower. And then for a moment, it was gone. But it came again, came again. Minute by minute, the rain grew thicker and more steady. East, east beyond the Sierras and the Rockies, the river of polar air slept on. Behind it, the snow-plastered houses of Cincinnati and Louisville, the quick frozen palms of the Ozarks. In Abilene and Fort Worth and Dallas, they felt it now. And men battling their way along gaol-swept streets reminded themselves. Between Texas and the North Pole, the only windbreak is a barbed wire fence. Rain will not harm a high-tension line. Snow will build up on it and then fall away of its own weight and bulk. But ice, at the 3,000-foot level in the Sierra the morning after the storm broke, neither rain nor snow fell from the church and clouds, but sleet, cheating the trees and bizarre robes of ice, coating the wires of the power and light 60-kilovolt line until they were a half-inch thick, an inch, two inches, until the weight became more than copper cable could bear. Let's go load, dispatcher. This is Ringo substation operator. The French bar 60-kilovolt line just went out. Don't say just. When did it go? 902, but I'm replacing it from two rivers in Buckskin Dam. Thank you. The load dispatcher looked at his desk clock and noted with satisfaction that it was a little past 903. I know I'm seeing it, but I just can't believe it. With that sun. For this morning's math, it just isn't supposed to look like this. Storms should move from west to east between the high-pressure areas of the pole and the Tropic of Cancer. They do, in the textbooks, that looks like El Mariah's trap. Well, that's what I mean, sir. Trap between that polar breakthrough over the plains and the one that came in over Alaska. Why, it could go on raining for days. And very well might. This is a miracle of electronics. This is the multiplex telephone program, carrying two or three radio programs, half a dozen personal conversations, and several teletype messages. Six of these cables cross the Donner Pass, strung from pole to telephone pole. The central transcontinental lead between San Francisco and the east. In 1579, the same year, Sir Francis Drake landed on the coast of California. A cedar sapling sprouted on the lip of a ravine far up in the Sierra Nevada. It was, however, somewhat insecurely rooted. And in 1789, a half century before the first immigrant let his wagons down the canyon walls with ropes, a windstorm toppled it. Its trunk has lain a thwart the ravine ever since, decaying but little in the high, dry mountain air. But last fall, a chipmunk burrowing beneath it dislodged a pound or so of gravel, and thus disturbed its delicate and ancient balance. And the weight of Mariah's snow finished the job. Now the log begins to roll, slides sideways, up ends and drops over the canyon's edge. 100 feet below, it strikes squarely among the crosshairs of pole 1-243-76 of the central transcontinental lead. Operator, hello, operator. This is the operator. I've just been cut off from New York. I'm sorry, sir. Sorry's not enough. What's the matter with you people? Hold the line, sir. Company as big as yours, you think they'd give better service. Absolutely ridiculous. This is an important call. Here is your party, sir. I'm sorry for the delay. You should be. Hello, Harry. Yeah, what happened? Who knows? Well, anyway, let's pick it up where we were before. You can't pick it up exactly where you were before, sir. Before you were talking from San Francisco via Salt Lake, Denver, and Chicago. Now you were talking to New York through Los Angeles, Oklahoma, and St. Louis. Over one of the alternate circuits, which had been previously set up by a telephone company traffic superintendent, who knew what a storm could do on the Donner Pass. You were right, chief. Huh? Look at this morning's map. That polar air that broke through over the plains finally made it across Mexico. It's out in the Pacific now. Uh-huh. Joining up with Mariah. That'll be the death of it. But she'll give us trouble tonight. And how's that? That old polar air mass is only a few hundred miles wide, but she's cold and dry below and warm and moist on top. When she hits Mariah, she'll blow her into bits. Cloudbursts, hail, and snow, thunder, lightning, and damnation. Tonight will be the night. US Highway 40 was still open, but only because the road superintendent and his crew had pushed the flanges and the rotaries around the clock for nearly 72 hours. And now the snow was thicker than ever. And the superintendent standing at the doorway of the maintenance station was standing there. Until the station garage was tired. Bone tired. A heavily pounding truck came upgrade from the west. A sedan, its headlights clawing with swirling snow, followed. And a few moments later, another. And then something began to bother the superman. Something vague. And then he realized what it was. Wally. Yo. Let's get out on the road. What's up? She was blocked somewhere down the pass. Nothing's coming through from the east. She was blocked, all right? At Wendy Point, a big truck and trailer was jackknifed across the road. And the drips were already piling up. Four cars were lined up brave. They're motors running. Idiots. Motor's idling. Wind is closed to keep warm. Wally, tell them to open up before they suffocate. You. I'll take the downgrade side. Shut up. Anybody heard here? Nobody heard but this truck. I'm a minded truck. You ran past the chain warnings yourself. You had chains on, you wouldn't be stuck in that drift. Yeah, but look, hey, what am I going to do? Hey, anybody in there? Hey, you. Call me. Yeah, you. Where are the people from this car? Oh, them. Yeah, what happened to them? Oh, yeah. Yeah, old name and a guy. She was sort of hysterical. She yelled something about we'd all get snored in and froze like somebody named Donna. Then they start off down the road walking. Hey, you think maybe we ought to start walking like she said, huh? No, you stay where you are. We'll get you out of this. When do they leave? About five minutes ago. And that's long enough. Hey, what's the matter up ahead? Road's blocked. You see a couple of people walking downgrade? Yes, we wonder. You got chains? Sure, I always got chains. I'm from Colorado. Good, then you must know mountains. Now, listen to me, Jack. I'm the road superintendent here. We aren't going to be able to clear the road for a while. Why don't you swing around while you still can and go on back downgrade after those two people? Well, no, I don't know. Can I save a couple of lives? Why, of course we will. There's a joint down at the bottom of the pass where you can get them some coffee. We'll let you know when the road's clear. Well, sure thing. Glad to help. Thanks a lot. You better get going. One of my rotaries is coming up behind you. I had no idea you got so much snow out this way. Yeah, well, will you get enough? Shut the window, Emily, and let's get out of here. Hey, Steve! Hey, Peterson! Give me a lift! Hi, boss. What you doing down here? I'll tell you later. Raise the plow, Steve, and get me up the road as fast as you can. Radio hot as a pistol. Let's go. KRDM-4, calling KRDO-1. KRDO-1 standing by for KRDM-4. I ain't got this. Bought all eastbound cars at the summit. Phone the boys at the lake to stop all westbound cars at the gates. Contact the highway patrol and tell them there's a block at Windy Point. Get a couple of men off the day shift and send them down with a push-plow and flanger. We're going to lose the road if we don't work fast. To lose the road was to lose his honor. But that night as Mariah thrashed across the Sierra and her death rows, the superintendent once more held the road. Once more the storm gave up before his machines did or his men. Once more. There would come a time at a storm, he reminded himself, when they might not. San Francisco Weather Bureau, prayer today, tomorrow, moderate, northwest winds, slightly cooler. You're welcome. The junior meteorologist turned back to his map, filling in reports from land stations across half the world and ships spun out upon the great ocean. But soon he let his eyes wander down the curial islands and across the Sea of Japan where surely a new wave should be forming, a wave which might develop into another great storm like Mariah. But now, no ship happened to be at the proper location to tell him about. The CBS Radio Workshop has presented Storm by George Stewart, adapted and directed by William N. Robeson with William Conrad as narrator. Featured in the cast were Helene Burke, Chet Stratton, Herb Butterfield, Byron Kane, Erie Bartel, Tony Barrett, Barney Phillips, Frank Gerstle, and Jack Krushen. Sound Patterns by Ray Kemper and Bill James. Original music for tonight's program was composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith. The workshop is produced by William Froome. Transcribed. America listens most to the CBS Radio Network.