History: Sheridan Weather Bureau

Today, we have instant access to what is going to happen weather wise. Radio, television, cell phones and internet give us weather forecasts, up to ten days out, current weather conditions and severe weather alerts, at the touch of a finger. But it wasn’t always that way. In 1907, the first weather bureau office opened in Sheridan.

This from The Semi-Weekly Enterprise April 23, 1907 – Weather Man Is Here: Local Observer Will Open Station About May 1 W. J. Olds, chief observer for the Sheridan weather bureau, is here to rush the work on the new weather building for this city, and expects no further delay in completing the building. Observer Olds is advised that the instruments for the Sheridan bureau have already been shipped by express, and the county commissioners have given him the offices formerly occupied by the county attorney at the courthouse. He will install the instruments there until the new building is complete.

This article, The Sheridan Enterprise, December 11, 1908, tells why the weather bureau is important to area. – Benefits Are Intended To Be General The Public is Invited to Visit the Bureau and Learn for Themselves the art of Weather Making—Sheepmen and all others desiring to learn weather conditions may call by telephone since the building of the United States weather bureau in this city, the question has often arisen: Do the people of the community fully understand the value of such an institution, and do they appreciate it? Do they, in any sense, depend upon the work of the bureau and take advantage of the information daily distributed by it in their daily avocations dependent to a greater or less degree upon weather conditions?

As in most new agencies, there were questions about whether or not it was worth the cost.

In other words is the bureau fulfilling its usefulness to the people as contemplated by the government and is the expense justified?

There are a great many familiar with the work of this branch of the government service, who do know, who do appreciate, who do depend for information, who do justify the expense and who do believe that the bureau is fulfilling the hopes of a liberal government. Still there are those, and it cannot be denied that they are numerous, who are not directly interested in weather and who know little about the elaborate, scientific and accurate methods employed in making observations for public benefit by the servants of the department.

If the general public will avail itself of the government’s cordial invitatlon to visit the bureau within the prescribed hours, from 9 a. m. to 4 p. m., on week days, there will be many who will learn of things heretofore undreamed of by them. A mere description of the self recording instruments, that measure sunshine and rainfall, tell you the direction in which the wind is blowing at every minute of the day, point out to you the exact degree of heat or cold, show you the atmospheric pressure to a hair line and all the other wonderful things, would be little understood.

To see them perform their every day work is both interesting and instructive and worth an hour of any person’s time. Since away back in 1870 the government has maintained a service having for its object the forecasting of the weather. The original design was for the benefit of navigation, but the practical utility of the service was recognized that it has expanded with the years and is now one of the Important department of the public service.

During its early development the work was conducted by the war department, but the demand for a strictly scientific bureau unhampered by military regulations, became so insistent that in 1891, a reorganization occurred and the weather bureau was transferred to the agricultural department. Now, in various parts of the country, there are magnificent buildings, finely equipped, devoted to the business of forecasting and recording the weather conditions, issuing warnings to the people, all m charge of trained scientists, To the general public the weather bureau is probably best known through the medium of its daily forecasts and weather maps. These forecasts are based upon simultaneous observations of local weather conditions taken daily at 8 a. m. and 8 p. m., seventy-fifth meridian time, at about 200 regular observing stations scattered throughout the United States and the West Indies.

Each of these stations is operated by one or more trained observers, and is equipped with mercurial barometers, thermometers, wind vanes, rain and snow gauges, and anemometers, and many of them with sunshine recorders, baragraphs, thermographs, and other devices which register automatically a continuous record of the local weather conditions and changes as they occur. The results of the twice daily observations are immediately telegraphed to the central office at Washington, D. C, where they are charted for study and interpretation by experts trained to forecast the weather conditions which may be expected to prevail during the following thirty-six to forty-eight hours.

A complete telegraphic report includes the following data: Temperature, pressure (reduced to sea level), precipitation, direction of wind, state of weather, current wind velocity, maximum or minimum temperature since last observation, and kind and amount of clouds, with the direction of their movement. From these data the forecaster, by comparison with preceding reports, Is able to trace the paths of storm areas from the time of their appearance to the moment of observation, and approximately determine and forecast their subsequent courses and the occurrence of other weather conditions.

Forecast centers are established at Boston, New Orleans, Louisville, Denver, San Francisco and Portland. The Denver district embraces Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Wyoming state and the Sheridan bureau are attached to the central office at Denver, and to this office is all data telegraphed and from this office all forecasts for the district emanate.

Within two hours after the morning observations have been taken, the forecasts are telegraphed from the forecast centers to more than 2,100 principal distributing points, whence they are further disseminated by telegraph telephone and mail. The forecasts reach nearly 160,000 addresses dally by mail, the greater part being delivered early in the day, and none later, as a rule, than 6 p. m. of the day of issue, and more than a million telephone subscribers, mainly in the rural districts, receive the forecasts by telephone within an hour of the time the prediction is made.

This system of forecast distribution is wholly under the supervision and at the expense of the government, and is in addition to and distinct from the distribution effected through the press associations and the daily newspapers. The rural free mail delivery system and the rural telephone lines afford means of bringing within the benefits of this system a large number of farming communities which before it was Impracticable to reach with the daily forecasts. The independent rural telephone lines are being utilized to their fullest extent, and this plan of distribution has been enlarged to cover the entire telephone service of many states.

The extent to which the work of the weather bureau, in the collection and publication of data and the issue of weather forecasts and warnings, affects the daily life of the people and becomes a factor In their various avocations and business enterprises, already very great, is increasing yearly. The uses made of the daily forecasts are so numerous and well known as to call for no remark, but the value to the manifold business interests of the country of the publication of the weather data and the dissemination of the warnings of exceptionally severe and injurious weather conditions, such as storms and hurricanes, cold waves, frosts, floods, heavy rains and snows, is not generally understood.

The warnings of those sudden and destructive temperature changes, known as cold waves, are probably next in importance. These warnings which are issued from twenty-four to thirty-six hours in advance, are disseminated throughout the threatened regions by means of flags displayed at regular weather bureau and sub-display stations, by telegraph, telephone, and mail service to all places receiving the daily forecasts, and to a large number of special addresses in addition.

The beneficial results of these warnings are manifold. Precautions are taken for the safeguarding of personal comfort and health and the protection from freezing of produce of all kinds, steam and water pipes, hot house plants and flowers.

Railroads regulate the size and movement of their freight trains, ice men prepare for harvesting, and many plans for business and pleasure are made on the expectation of the conditions forecast. Immediately upon receipt of forecasts which for the present come from Denver, the official in charge of the local bureau prepares and issues cards giving predictions for ensuing twenty-four hours. These cards are placed in all public places in the city in holders made for the purpose and labeled, “Weather Forecasts.”

The information is also telegraphed and telephoned to all available points in the county. The Sheridan telephone exchange always has the information at hand, supplied by the bureau, and sheepmen and others on telephone lines can always learn of expected conditions. The value of the local bureau, until such time as It is made a full fledged station and authorized to make its own local forecasts, is to obtain records for future use.

The location is admirable for this purpose. The immediate value is to warn farmers, sheepmen and others of the approach of frost and cold waves. The way to get acquainted with the further work of the weather department is to go to the bureau and observe for yourself just how weather is made

The article mentions sheepmen, but cattle ranchers and farmers depended on the weather forecasts to know if a late season snowstorm would create a hazard for young and newly shorn livestock, and the rancher could make sure the livestock was protected. Farmers also relied on the forecasts when planting or harvesting. Today, weather forecasting is a science, trained meteorologists bring us up-to-the-minute weather conditions through internet, television and radio. But in Sheridan the weather bureau started 117 years ago this month.