Weather Gives Conner a Brief Scare, but Bedford Makes the Correct Call

FREMANTLE, Australia — Chris Bedford darted around the Stars & Stripes compound Monday morning on his tiptoes, checking flags across the harbor and studying the clouds, his heart in his mouth and his stomach in knots.

The wind was not cooperating.

“I wore a track in my office floor,” said Bedford, the 22-year-old meteorologist from Redford, Mich., who forecasts the weather for Stars & Stripes.

Bedford works with Lee Davis, who was Conner’s weatherman at Newport, R.I., in 1983. It’s trickier business here, where information is limited.

For Monday, Bedford and Davis had forecast easterlies of 10 to 15 knots switching to a strong sea breeze in the afternoon.

“There were a couple of nervous hours when things were falling apart,” Bedford said. “We saw at 11 o’clock that things weren’t working out. We expected the winds to build, but they were down to 11 or 12 knots, so we went into a full revision.”