'Because of their crew's ignorance of the direction and strength of the winds blowing over England at the time of the raid, the Zeppelins failed to reach their target, and dropped their bombs on the east coast towns instead!' [26]

Because of the disruption of the usual system of collection of surface observations from different European countries during World War I, Norwegian meteorologists, V. and J. Bjerknes (father and son) developed the theory of frontal analysis, which was soon widely applied to weather forecasting in the northern hemisphere—and later, interpreted appropriately for the southern hemisphere.

From the mid-1930s, the rapid growth of civil aviation in Australia made heavy demands for meteorological services. More frequent weather reports were required, and additional details such as visibility and height of cloud bases and tops were needed. Much of the expansion of the Met. in the pre-World War II period was associated with the developing aviation industry. Late in 1936, an English expert was brought to Australia to investigate requirements. As a result, the nucleus of an aviation meteorological service was formed in 1937, and qualified Met. officers were placed in charge of newly established airport weather offices. One of the first of these was at Essendon, Victoria. These officers were mainly graduates of the first forecasters' course conducted at the Melbourne Met. bureau.

Bureau of Meteorology