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The Wright Weather
Wed Dec 17, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
This month marks the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest technical achievements of modern
history. And it wouldn't have been possible without the weather. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton, and
this is The Weather Notebook.
December 17, 1903, one century ago today, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully completed the
first ever powered, piloted, heavier-than-air, controlled flight, on a remote stretch of sandy
terrain near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wrights chose Kitty Hawk as the site for their
experiments several years earlier, in part after consulting tables of average wind speeds
across the country that were published by the U.S. Weather Bureau in the journal, Monthly
Weather Review. Wilbur had calculated that they would need a wind speed of at least 15 miles
per hour to provide sufficient lift for a piloted glider and Kitty Hawk was one of the few
rural sites on the list that met this requirement.
The sandy, windswept dunes of the Outer Banks provided an ideal setting for the brothers as
they carried out their gliding experiments during the late summer and fall months of 1900 -
1903. The weather, however, did not always cooperate. The Wrights endured strong winds,
heavy rains, bitterly cold temperatures and even snow. Their determination to succeed,
however, did not falter.
On the morning of December 17, 1903, the brothers woke to find the puddles near their camp
covered with ice. The temperature at Kitty Hawk that day never rose above 37 degrees. At ten
o'clock that morning, the anemometer at the Kitty Hawk Weather Bureau station recorded a wind
speed of 27 mph. At 10:35 am, with Orville at the controls, the airplane lifted into
history.
Sean Potter sent in today's story. The Weather Notebook is produced by the Mount Washington
Observatory, with support from Subaru of America and The National Science Foundation.
Today's Links
The Wright Weather feature article from the November/December 2003 issue of Weatherwise:
http://www.weather-wise.org/anmviewer.asp?a=59&z=1
The Wright Brothers & the Invention of the Aerial Age
http://www.nasm.si.edu/galleries/gal209/wrights.htm
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