Brad stewart, age ll, of Gladstone, Man., Canada, for his question:

Where is the jet stream?

Plane pilots have some staggering stories about this. high speed, high flying wind. Its moody behavior is of great interest to air lines who want to learn all they can about it. Lately, meteorologists also have become interested. They think that more information about the jet stream may help predict weather for weeks and perhaps months ahead.

In l9l8, Maj. Rudolph Schroeder met the jet stream without knowing it. He was a test pilot flying from Dayton, Ohio, at 28,500 feet. His plane was shoved by a tremendous wind and after two hours of flying west he landed 200 miles east from where he started. In l944, a B 29 left the Marianas Islands for Japan, but the fast, high flying bomber ran smack into a jet stream. even with engines at full throttle the plane could make no progress against this mighty head wind and its crew was forced to return it to its base.

Flight experts and weathermen began to study the mysterious jet stream in World War II. It is a tube shaped wind of tremendous force blowing like a waving ribbon miles above the earth. Its phantom winds reach 250, 300 and even 350 miles an hour. It circles the earth moving eastward across Europe and sweeps on to buffet the high Himalayas. It then swoops across China and the wide expanse of the Pacific. Then it knifes a path between northern California and Oregon. On it rushes, clearing the sierras and the Rockies and speeds across the plains to the Alleghenies. eventually it veers northward to cross the Atlantic.

This moody jet stream does not blow on a strict schedule. Its height varies from 20,000 to 35,000 feet, usually higher in summer. Planes flying eastward can take advantage of it as a tail wind, but pilots cannot count on finding it. sometimes it is not where they expect it and sometimes it is not there at all. experts are studying the paths of other jet streams farther south and still others in the southern hemisphere.

Meteorologists suspect that jet streams are associated with the birth of cyclones and anticyclones. When one of these gusty wind tunnels tangles with polar air, the results on our weather may be disastrous. A mass of frigid air may force it from its path and a normal weather front becomes a line of devastating squalls.

These gusty wind tunnels amaze even the experts. They wonder how such tremendous suction can be created so high up in the upper atmosphere. They wonder why their paths occur in sharply defined zones. The birthplace of our jet stream seems to be where warm and cold air masses Meet above the northern Atlantic. But we cannot explain it in detail. until we know much more about it.