Explorer Samuel de Champlain noted the deceitful weather of the northeast United States was much different than from his native France. “On arriving in summer everything is very pleasant on account of the woods, the beautiful landscapes,” he wrote, in a description many of the region’s residents today could recognize. The beauty, he wrote, just belies then the cold setting in: “There are six months of winter in that country. The cold was severe and more extreme than in France, and lasted much longer.” Weather forecasting was not only a matter of personal comfort; in a largely agrarian society, when cold snaps or severe storms could mean the difference between boons and famines, it was a matter of survival.

On this day, November 1, in 1870, what became the National Weather Service and was at the time a division of the military’s Signal Corps, sent in the first weather observations from 24 military outposts across the country.

Local temperature observations had already been going on for quite some time — reportedly, President Abraham Lincoln brought a thermometer with him, recording a balmy 76 degrees outside, during his Gettsyburg Address — but the telegraph enabled the study to go national. Soon the Signal Corps would be taking and transmitting temperature readings from every state in the union.