Cormac could put his pencil on Alaska and describe an unbroken, graceful, isobaric curve through Newfoundland, continuing with a steady hand across the Arctic waste to veer southwards towards Berlin by way of Glendalough and Portland Bill. Thence, with precise regard to every observation on the weather map, his line might make a sudden, but always tasteful, sally into Greece before fading into terra incognita near the chart's edge.
Some 30 years ago, Cormac O'Connor, then a very senior forecaster in Shannon, taught younger meteorologists like me how weather charts were drawn. But we could never emulate the man no matter how we tried.
Cormac was more than a mere scientist, a simple weatherman; he was an artist - and every weather chart he ever drew announced the fact.
The art of drawing weather maps is less important now than it was in Cormac's time. Computers have taken over much of the routine and spaceage machines produce etchings fully worthy of the great Leonardo.
But other facets of Cormac's character have a timeless relevance. He was a gentle philosopher, almost child-like in his never-ending sense of wonder at the universe; he was a Gaeilgeoir in the nicest possible meaning of the term, from whose mellifluous tongue the beautiful Munster Irish of his native Co Kerry would resonantly flow; and he was also a craftsman of the English language, in which he wrote on a myriad of matters.
Many who did not know Cormac may remember him for the weekly Weatherwatch he wrote in recent years for the Examiner - a kind of Weather Eye of the south. Listen to him and get the flavour of the man:
"As I wander down to the seashore and think of the multiplicity and complexity of life in the brackish sloblands, I think of how small we are in this vast scenario. I think how each individual organism, each bacterium, bird and fish, lives out its life - just as I live mine - except that man is the only one who interferes with Nature's global plan.
"We have separated ourselves from the whole to which we belong; it behoves us to step warily, lest we lose what we inherited."
Cormac O'Connor, artist, philosopher, meteorologist, breathed his last in Cork on Tuesday, and they will bury him today. As Auden wrote:
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Let aeroplanes circle, moaning overhead,
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.