WEATHER WATCH

By Mary O’KEEFE

CVW received a call contesting the numbers I released in last week’s article, which were according to statista.com, on the number of combustion engine vehicles in the U.S. So I reviewed and searched more sources including the Model T Ford Club of America and Duryea Motor Carriage at the National Museum of American History. This is what I found:

First off, the first recorded vehicle in America was American made. On Sept. 21, 1893 Frank Duryea road-tested the vehicle – a secondhand carriage with a gasoline engine – in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1896, Frank and his brother Charles, and financial backers, founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company, the first American company that manufactured and sold automobiles. Thirteen production models were made; the only surviving example is in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. 

“The brothers [Frank and Charles Duryea] purchased a used horse-drawn wagon for $70 and installed their first single-cylinder, four-horsepower, free-piston gasoline engine that Frank built at their shop on 47 Taylor Street. After the buggy was fitted with a friction transmission, low-tension ignition and a spray-type carburetor, the brothers, with Charles at the tiller, road tested the first-ever, working American made gasoline-powered automobile on September 20, 1893. 

“The first motor vehicle race in America was held in Chicago in 1895 and was sponsored by H. H. Kohlsaat, owner of the Chicago Times-Herald. The contest was being held ‘with a view of stimulating invention and rousing an interest’ in this new form of transportation. It drew 70 entries. Kohlsaat also offered a $500 prize for anyone who came up with a proper name for this horseless carriage. Thousands of suggestions were sent to the Times-Herald, and the prize was divided among three people who proposed the word ‘motocycle.’ Kohlsaat began publishing the first auto trade journal, entitled The Motocycle Maker and Dealer, later that same year. The name ‘motocycle’ never caught on with Americans but eventually the word ‘automobile’ did. In January 1899, the New York Times was the first publication to use the word ‘automobile’ in an editorial, criticizing it as a mixture of Greek and Latin origin.

“At 8:55 a.m. on November 28, 1895, six motor vehicles left Chicago’s snow-covered Jackson Park for a 54-mile road race to Evanston, Illinois and back. Car Number 5, the second car built by inventor Frank Duryea, won the race in just over 10 hours at an average speed of 7.3 mph, earning the $2,000 prize money. The next day’s Times-Herald reported: ‘Persons who are inclined to decry the development of the horseless carriage will be forced to recognize it as an admitted mechanical achievement, highly adapted to some of the most urgent needs of our civilization.’ After Frank won the Chicago race, demand grew for the Duryea Motor Wagon. In March 1896, Charles Duryea founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company, the first incorporated American business for the express purpose of building automobiles for sale to the public. The workers started building the first of 13 cars sold that year by hand at their Taylor Street facility – and thus Duryea became the first ever commercially produced vehicle and the largest automobile factory in the United States,” according to MotorCities National Heritage Area Partnership.

“[The Model T] was first [introduced] in 1908. From 1908 to 1927, the last year of production, there were 15 million Model Ts sold. It was not the first [combustion engine vehicle] made in the U.S. but it was the first one that was mass produced by an assembly line that was affordable,” according to a spokeswoman of the Model T Ford Club of America. 

So I did write that there were 8,000 vehicles in America in the year of 1900, which came from my source statisa.com; the same number was also quoted by the Federal Highway Administration. 

Below are the FHAs stats for following years. These numbers are for automobiles only:

  1901 recorded 14,800 automobiles; 1902 there were 23,000; 1903 there were 32,920; 1904 there were 54,590; 1905 there were 77,400; 1906 there were 105,800; 1907 there were 140,300; 1908 there were 194,400; and in 1909 there were 305,950. In 1927 there were 20,193,333 automobiles registered. (For the full FHA list, visit https://tinyurl.com/j4xuju2c.)

According to Consumer Affairs, “In 2022, American drivers spent an average of 60.2 minutes driving 30.1 miles per day. The mounting costs of purchasing and maintaining a vehicle – including historically high auto loan interest rates and rising auto insurance premiums – have caused new auto sales to steadily decrease from 2018-2022. Despite a slight uptick in 2021, sales in 2022 were the lowest in a decade. However, the overall number of cars on the road has grown modestly, increasing from roughly 276 million in 2020 to 282 million in 2021. And in 2022, 255 million driving Americans spent a total of 93 billion hours on the road.” 

Again, my point was simple: The more vehicles that burn fossil fuels the more pollutants are in the air, which are more greenhouse gases. 

Note: California leads the nation in vehicle registrations for electric vehicles as of Dec. 31, 2023. Of all of the electric vehicles in the nation, California had the greatest number at 35% – 1,256,646 electric vehicles. Florida had the second highest count at 254,878 followed by Texas with 230,125, according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy. 

Our weather is going to be pretty calm compared to the last few weeks. Temperatures from now through Friday will be cool with highs in the upper 50s. The weekend will see warmer temperatures with highs in the low to mid 70s. Monday’s high is expected to be 74 with rain expected Tuesday through Thursday of next week.

The rain does not look significant for mud flows, said Ryan Kittell, meteorologist with NOAA.

No Santa Ana winds are in the short term future though there may be some slight winds during the rains but nothing significant.