In 1776, Thomas Jefferson hit upon the idea of organizing a volunteer corps in Virginia to observe and report the weather. When an untimely cold snap or storm meant the difference between a bountiful harvest and hard times for the mainly agrarian colonies, weather reports played a very consequential part. By 1800s four other states had organized similar networks, but no official body of government existed to record and disseminate weather information until a far-seeing president and a joint act of Congress created the National Weather Service.

On this day, February 9, in 1870 President Ulysses S. Grant signed a congressional resolution “to provide for taking meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the States and Territories…and for giving notice on the northern [Great] Lakes and on the seacoast by magnetic telegraph and marine signals, of the approach and force of storms.

“The new bureau was placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of War, as military discipline, it was thought, was best suited to timely and accurate reporting of weather conditions. The War Department set up a series of 22 stations, each with an “observing-sergeant” from the army’s Signals Corps telegraphing observed conditions to Washington.