MANHATTAN — Ben Franklin – statesman, diplomat, publisher and electric kite flyer. Add a new description – weather guy. State climatologist Mary Knapp says Franklin learned something profound about weather patterns exactly 267 years ago today. He was disappointed when a storm going through his home of Philadelphia obscured his view of a lunar eclipse. But his curiosity was piqued when his brother in Boston, who was also checking the lunar eclipse, reported that the same storm rolled into Boston about an hour after the eclipse. Ben Franklin, who figured that storms always tracked west to east, realized that storm patterns could also go due north.
Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2 p.m.
