• picture
  • picture
  • picture
  • picture
Public Radio's Environmental News Magazine (follow us on Google News)

The Living on Earth Almanac

Air Date: Week of

This week, facts about... the U.S. National Weather Service

Transcript

CURWOOD: Forty-two degrees, clear, wind out of the west at 12 miles an hour. That was the weather report from Milwaukee on November 1st, 1870, one of 24 simultaneous reports wired to Washington, DC, that day from observers around the nation. And so began what is now called the National Weather Service. Throughout the nineteenth century, scientists were improving their means of measuring and predicting weather, but the real breakthrough was the invention of the telegraph. It allowed for synoptic forecasting, that is, the collection of data from many different places at once. Just a week after it began, the service forecasted its first storm. A year later, it was making nationwide forecasts three times a day. In the next 24 hours, the service will likely process 400,000 meteorological bulletins. Things weren't always so smooth at the startup. For example, the Weather Service had a hard time establishing a field station in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Most of the buildings there had been destroyed in the Civil War. And in the Midwest, an inspector visiting a field station discovered an empty room. It turned out the observer there dabbled in games of chance, and paid off a poker debt by pawning all the forecasting equipment. And for this week, that's the Living on Earth Almanac.

 

 

Living on Earth wants to hear from you!

Living on Earth
62 Calef Highway, Suite 212
Lee, NH 03861
Telephone: 617-287-4121
E-mail: comments@loe.org

Newsletter [Click here]

Donate to Living on Earth!
Living on Earth is an independent media program and relies entirely on contributions from listeners and institutions supporting public service. Please donate now to preserve an independent environmental voice.

Newsletter
Living on Earth offers a weekly delivery of the show's rundown to your mailbox. Sign up for our newsletter today!

Sailors For The Sea: Be the change you want to sea.

The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment: Committed to protecting and improving the health of the global environment.

Contribute to Living on Earth and receive, as our gift to you, an archival print of one of Mark Seth Lender's extraordinary wildlife photographs. Follow the link to see Mark's current collection of photographs.

Buy a signed copy of Mark Seth Lender's book Smeagull the Seagull & support Living on Earth