Irving P. Krick (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, 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 US Air Force; Krick befriended Air Force 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 1937 he helped found the school's meteorology department and became its head. The department was unique in its commercial focus on the needs of profitable industries, including not just aviation, but almost anyone willing to pay, including the movie industry, for which Krick famously forecast the weather for the burning of Atlanta in Gone With The Wind. Krick was determined about making money; "weather forecasting was his product line, although, like many a great salesmen, his number one product was himself". He then stayed as a professor, offering a special curriculum for Arnold's nascent Air Force Weather Service.
Caltech terminated the meteorology department in 1948. In response, Krick left the school to start his own firm, taking with him most of the department staff.
World War II
With the outbreak of World War II Arnold recruited Krick into the United States Army Air Corps. Krick prevailed over other, scientifically inclined meteorologists: while they searched for causes of natural phenomena, Krick relied on analyzing historic patterns and cycles. He reused old weather maps that resembled current situation, arguing that future weather developments will most likely follow the recorded patterns - the same "weather typing" that brought him commissions from Hollywood studios. Critics called Krick's methods "canned memory". The primitive methods and aggressive salesmanship made Krick an enemy of scientific elite like George Cressman and Carl-Gustaf Rossby and Weather Bureau chief Francis W. Reichelderfer, who detested Krick as a "smug, supremely self-confident self-promoter". However, with Arnold's backing Krick was nearly invincible.