More details about the meteorology:
Over the protests of Krick and the American contingent, Stagg told Eisenhower that the outlook hadn’t improved. “Weighing all factors,” Eisenhower later wrote, “I decided that the attack would have to be postponed,” likely to the second window in June if poor weather persisted over the following days. The general recalled the thousands of men already in the Irish Sea and the Channel in preparation for the invasion, hoping to avoid alerting the Germans of the timing of the attack.
Later on June 4, the forecasters finally caught a break. New data suggested that a cold front would produce an unexpected lull in the severe weather on June 6, with winds around Beaufort Force 4, although the bureaus disagreed on the conditions that would follow in the days after that. As Stagg tells Eisenhower in Pressure, the Nazis will “never see it coming, sir, a gap like this in the storm.” He adds, “The weather won’t be perfect. But it will do.”
In his memoir, Eisenhower wrote that the uncertain forecast for June 7 onward posed difficulties for the invasion “because of the possibility that we might land the first several waves successfully and then find later buildup impracticable.” Still, he added:
The consequences of the delay justified great risk, and I quickly announced the decision to go ahead with the attack on June 6. The time was then 4:15 a.m., June 5. No one present disagreed, and there was a definite brightening of faces as, without a further word, each went off to his respective post of duty to flash out to his command the messages that would set the whole host in motion.
