It was 1913 and Porta, for reasons unknown, was no longer a faculty member. But the leaders of the Santa Clara observatory hired him for his mathematical skills, specifically to determine electromagnetic connections between sunspots and planets of the solar system.

Porta’s supervisor was the Rev. Jerome Sixtus Ricard, director of the observatory and a professor highly regarded for his knowledge of the weather. He was “Padre of the Rains,” and believed sunspots – gaseous flares erupting from the surface of the sun – shaped the Earth’s climate. His monthly publication, The Sunspot, was a sort of weather bible for those along the Pacific coast. His forecasts were remarkably accurate.

Father Ricard thought Porta perfect for the task: He could busy himself computing the “all-absorbing calculations” needed to determine precisely where flares would originate on the sun’s surface, thus advancing the science of forecasting.

“Hence the need of a man, who, having nothing else to do, can put his whole mind on a given question and keep it there,” the priest wrote, “well knowing that his bread and butter are safe in the meantime.”

It was a temporary hire that Ricard would deeply regret.

Porta took what small knowledge he gained at the observatory and, after two years, left to establish his own weather and earthquake forecasting service. He claimed new methods for predicting earthquakes in an anxious region still recovering from the 1906 quake that devastated San Francisco. And he invoked Ricard’s name to bolster his reputation while simultaneously questioning the scientific veracity of the Santa Clara observatory’s work.

Ricard was furious.

“[Porta] has been only a sort of obtruding habitué, making frequent visits and putting a lot of questions in reference to the astronomy of the sun, the planets, weather and earthquakes,” Ricard told Sunspot readers. “… his forecasts are not only not inspired by us but may be just the opposite of what we would say, even on the hypothesis, as is pretended, that he has learned all our ideas and ways correctly.

“Forecasting is not simply a matter of abstract principle, but above all, one of long experience, and such an experience too, as is founded on the records of natural facts, showing how to apply principle to a concrete case. Professor Porta is not, therefore, in any sense, a duplicate of the Observatory of the University of Santa Clara.”

Porta knew nothing about astronomy before coming to the observatory, the priest wrote, and any meteorological terminology he used was the spouting of “a humble parrot.”

Ricard also blasted Porta for owning no scientific equipment, not even a telescope. “Without instruments of observation, one is no more able to launch, intelligently and trustworthily, even a mere general weather forecast for the guidance of people on sea or land or air, than a log can fly.”

It should be noted that Ricard was regularly featured in area newspapers, with forecasts that carried far less ominous tones. Professional jealousy may have fueled his criticisms. But none of the priest’s protestations mattered. Porta’s weather predictions were now being printed in the San Jose newspaper, and soon would spread to newspapers across the country.