Billingham Film Unit feature on weather experiments that use ICI Billingham-made dry ice. Title: The Billingham Film Unit presents Title: Weather Experiment Close-up of a wireless radio announcing the weather forecast. A Meteorological Officer in a pin stripe suit sits in a living room, listening. He switches off the radio and begins to explain the value of weather forecasts. An anemometer spins next to a weather vane. Wind speed is shown on a black circular analogue gauge reading six...

Billingham Film Unit feature on weather experiments that use ICI Billingham-made dry ice. Title: The Billingham Film Unit presents Title: Weather Experiment Close-up of a wireless radio announcing the weather forecast. A Meteorological Officer in a pin stripe suit sits in a living room, listening. He switches off the radio and begins to explain the value of weather forecasts. An anemometer spins next to a weather vane. Wind speed is shown on a black circular analogue gauge reading six knots. Wind direction, on a similar device, swings from south to south west. A man plots with a pencil on a chart. A plan motors past the set of metal framed art deco windows. Three military staff smoke while examining a chart. A large square-bottomed Bakelite telephone is on the table. Another man, also in a pin stripe suit, reads instruments housed in a weather station. An inflatable balloon is launched. A teletype machine is operating. One of the weather staff reads the teletype data and plots on a chart of the British Isles. Cylinders of Drikold (or dry ice) are transported along a conveyor belt. One of these cylindrical blocks is packaged into a Drikold paper bag. A large leather bag of Drikold is unloaded from a plane and shifted into buckets. One of the buckets is passed up into the fuselage of a second plane through an open hatch. The pilot mounts the cockpit and takes up his seat. The plane “P for Peter” fires its propeller engines and prepares for take-off. Close-up of aviation instruments. A travelling shot of the plane flying above the clouds cuts to the pilot manipulating the controls. Further close-ups of gauges and instruments follow. 300lbs of Drikold is released from the back of the plane. Inside the plane, the navigator records the atmospheric conditions and the location of the cloud. Close-up of water streaming down a window. The scene returns to the Meteorological Officer’s sitting room as he explains some of the drawbacks of this rain-making technology. Title: A Billingham Film Title: The End