Career
His text on hurricanes remained the defining work on the topic from the late 1930s into the early 1950s. He served during World War I as a weather officer in the Signal Corps. After the war, he became the Official in Charge (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) at the Galveston, Texas weather office.
Moving to Washington, Doctorate. C., he became the Assistant Chief of the Forecast Division in 1929.
He later served as chiefs of the Marine Division, Social Research&F Division, and Assistant Chief of Bureau for Operations. He retired in October 1954 and moved to Frederick, Maryland.
Scientists were aware of the warming of sections of the United States by about 3˚F since the 1860s. The American Meteorological Society held a convention in Washington, District of Columbia where the topic was discussed.
Doctor Tannehill came away from the meeting thinking the cause was due to a slow increase in the radiation of the sun.
After a flurry of unidentified flying object reports were witnessed across the United States, including one at Roswell, the then-chief of the United States Weather Bureau"s division of synoptic reports and forecasts was asked about the objects being seen in the sky. His quote was "I’d like to see one first before I make a guess." He did, however, rule out weather balloons, stating they were unlikely to have been mistaken "all over the country and all in one week" for mysterious objects speeding through the sky at supersonic speeds.