During a particularly busy and stressful week with nothing else ready to post I noticed the National Weather Service (NWS) doing a lot of posts related to the fact that the NWS is observing an anniversary on October 1. So I thought a quick link post about the NWS would be fun today since I’m a weather spotter in real life and love all things related to weather anyway. Please note that a weather spotter is not a storm chaser. Weather spotting is simply about knowing what to look for wherever or whenever and reporting it as needed. Some localities and organizations, however, do more, much, much more – sometimes called storm chasing or storm intercepting.
From the NWS Facebook page:
Curious, I dug around on the NWS site and found a History of the National Weather Service page that shows a timeline major events for the service.
Another post I ran across this last week and found especially interesting was about the way they shared the weather in the early 1900s:
In 1908, Professor Charles F. Marvin, of the Weather Bureau’s Instrument Division (and later the chief of the Weather Bureau), designed a shelter called a “weather kiosk.” The kiosk was 7 feet high, 4 feet square, and had four 30-inch panels on each side. It contained weather maps and forecast information, as well as instruments for measuring high and low temperature, current temperature and humidity, and rainfall. Several dozen kiosks were placed at favorable locations in the central district of larger towns and cities that had Weather Bureau offices. Staff members of the offices would update the maps and forecasts at the kiosk daily.
The Tale of the Weather Bureau Kiosk
Library of Congress photo
And finally something for the kiddies or for teachers of the kiddies there is a section on the NWS website full of all kinds of weather related goodies for kids to “learn science and safety with Owlie Skywarn“. I immediately had to check out the weird weather link, of course.