Met Office history

By 1860, 500 stations were furnishing daily telegraphic weather reports to the Washington Evening Star, and as the network grew, other existing systems were gradually absorbed, including several state weather services.

So, he established the first public weather forecast service in August 1861.

1869: Telegraph service, instituted in Cincinnati, began collecting weather data and producing weather charts.

1894: William Eddy, using five kites to loft a self-recording thermometer, makes first observations of temperatures aloft.

1895: Secretary of Agriculture J. Sterling Morton appoints Professor Willis Luther Moore chief of the Weather Bureau.

1898: President William McKinley orders the Weather Bureau to establish a hurricane warning network in the West Indies.

1900: Cable exchange of weather warnings and other weather information begins with Europe.

1901: Official three-day forecasts begin for the North Atlantic.

1902: The Marconi Company begins broadcasting Weather Bureau forecasts by wireless telegraphy to Cunard Line steamers.

1904: The government begins using airplanes to conduct upper air atmospheric research.

1907: Weather sensitive historic event: Round-the-world cruise of United States "Great White Fleet" including 16 battleships and 12,000 men.

1910: Weather Bureau begins issuing generalized weekly forecasts for agricultural planning; its River and Flood Division begins assessment of water available each season for irrigating the West.

1912: As a result of the Titanic disaster, an international ice patrol is established, conducted by the Coast Guard; first fire weather forecast issued.

1914: An aerological section is established within the Weather Bureau to meet growing needs of aviation; first daily radiotelegraphy broadcast of agricultural forecasts by the University of North Dakota.

24 October 1916 marks the date of the very first operational military forecast.

1918: The Weather Bureau begins issuing bulletins and forecasts for domestic military flights and for new air mail routes.

1920: Meteorologists form a professional organization, the American Meteorological Society, which is still active today.

Forecasting techniques took a great leap forward in 1922 when Met Office scientist Lewis Fry Richardson published a ground-breaking piece of work looking at how to use maths and physics to

1926: The Air Commerce Act directs the Weather Bureau to provide for weather services to civilian aviation; fire weather service formally inaugurated when Congress provides funds for seven fire weather districts.

1928: The teletype replaces telegraph and telephone service as the primary method for communicating weather information.

1933: A science advisory group apprizes President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the work of the volunteer Cooperative Observer Program is one of the most extraordinary services ever developed, netting the public more benefits per dollar expended than any other government service in the world.

1935: A hurricane warning service is established.

1937: First official Weather Bureau radio meteorograph, or radiosonde sounding made at East Boston, Mass.

1939: The Weather Bureau initiates automatic telephone weather service in New York City; radio meteorgraphs, or radiosondes, replace all military and Weather Bureau aircraft observations.

1941: Doctor Helmut Landsberg, the "Father of Climatology," writes the first edition of his elementary textbook entitled, Physical Climatology.

Perhaps the most important forecasts in history were those used in the days leading up to the D-Day landings in June 1944.

1945: More than 900 women are employed by the Weather Bureau as observers and forecasters, as a result of filling positions of men during World War II.

1948: USAF Air Weather Service meteorologists issue first tornado warnings from Tinker Air Force Base.

1951: The Severe Weather Warning Center — forerunner of the National Severe Storms Center — begins operation at Tinker Air Force Base, in Oklahoma.

1957-58: The International Geophysical year provides first concerted world wide sharing of meteorological research data.

The Met Office purchased its first computer in 1959.

1961: President Kennedy, in his State of the Union address, invites all nations to join the United States in developing an International Weather Prediction Program.

1963: Doctor Robert M. White succeeds Doctor Reichelderfer as chief of the Weather Bureau.

The AMS points out that if forecasters were indicted for an incorrect forecast there could soon be a total lack of forecasters. (Minutes of the AMS Council, October 3-4, 1964).

Operational weather forecasts, driven by NWP, began six years later, on 2 November 1965.

1967: Responsibility for issuing air pollution advisories is assigned to the Weather Bureau’s National Meteorological Center.

1970: The Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) becomes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with Doctor Robert White assuming the role of its first administrator.

1975: The first "hurricane hunter" Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) is launched into orbit; these satellites with their early and close tracking of hurricanes, greatly reduce the loss of life from such storms.

1977: The success of weather satellites results in the elimination of the last United States weather observation ship; real time access to satellite data by national centers advances hurricane, marine and coastal storm forecasts.

1982: El Chicon volcano erupts in Mexico; NOAA polar weather satellites track movement of its cloud around the earth as a possible global climate impact.

1985: Harvard's Blue Hill Observatory celebrates 100 years of continuous monitoring of the atmosphere.

He serves until his retirement in 1988, when he becomes executive director of the American Meteorological Society.

1992: Twenty-two of the planned 115 modernized Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) were built or remodeled during the year, with 12 NWS radars installed.

1995: The National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program (NTHMP), the nation’s community-focused program to improve tsunami mitigation and preparedness of at-risk areas within the United States and its territories is created.

2000: The Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS), a high-tech, interactive weather computer and communications system has been installed in 152 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sites across the country.

2001: President George W. Bush issues the first presidential proclamation for the National Hurricane Preparedness week.

2003: National Academy of Sciences report, “Fair Weather: Effective Partnerships in Weather and Climate Services” released to advise NOAA on approaches it should take to improve relationships with private sector.

2006: Severe flooding occurs over portions of the Northeast in June due to several weeks of heavy rainfall, affecting six states and resulting in over $1 billion in damage/costs and at least 20 deaths.

A series of three storms affected the Pacific Northwest between December 1 and 3, 2007, resulting in 11 fatalities and an estimated $1 billion in damage.

2010: NWS unveiled a new hurricane scale this season called the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

2011: 2011 saw a record-breaking number of 10 separate weather, water and climate disasters, each with an economic loss of $1 billion or more.