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agency responsible for gathering and interpreting meteorological data for weather study and forecasts

an administrative unit responsible for gathering and interpreting meteorological data for weather study and forecasts

first suggested in 1817 by Josiah Meigs, then Commissioner of the Land Office, who established a system of meteorological registers in connection with the office. In 1819 a co-operative movement was begun by Surgeon-General Lovell, of the Army, who had weather reports made each month by the officers of different military posts. Some twenty years later the lake system of meteorological observations was established by the Engineer Department. In 1836 predictions of meteorological phenomena began to be made by the Smithsonian Institution, and the results of these, together with those of the Land Office and War Department, being published in 1839, formed the basis for a scientific meteorological bureau. In 1869 the " Weather Bulletin of the Cincinnati Bureau " appeared. In 1870 Congress made a money appropriation for the establishment of a Weather Bureau at Washington and ordered arrangements to be made for telegraphic communications between posts of observation all over the country. Until 1891 the Bureau was a bureau of the War Department; in that year it was transferred to the Department of Agriculture.