- 350BC – Aristotle wrote Meteorology.
- 25 – Pomponius Mela formalizes the climatic zone system.
- 1620 – Francis Bacon analyzes the scientific method in his Great
Instauration of Learning.
- 1686 – Edmund Halley presents a systematic study of the trade winds and
monsoons and identifies solar heating as the cause of atmospheric
motions.
- 1686 – Edmund Halley establishes the relationship between barometric
pressure and height above sea level.
- 1714 – G. D. Fahrenheit creates reliable scale for measuring
temperature with a mercury-type thermometer
- 1716 – Edmund Halley suggests that aurorae are caused by “magnetic
effluvia” moving along the Earth’s magnetic field lines.
- 1742 – Anders Celsius, a swedish astronomer, proposed the centigrade
scale for thermometers.
- 1842 – Elias Loomis performed an experiment to gain insight into the
wind speed needed to defeather a chicken. He loaded a cannon with gun
powder and a chicken.
- 1860 – 500 US telegraph stations are making weather observations and
submitting them back to the Smithsonian Institute. The observations are
later interupted by the Civil War.
- 1869 – Joseph Lockyer starts the scientific journal Nature.
- 1890 – Weather Bureau is created as a civilian operation under the
Department of Agriculture.
- 1898 – Weather Bureau established a hurricane warning network in the
West Indies.
- 1900 – Hurricane strikes Galveston, Texas, killing over 6,000 people.
- 1920 – Milutin Milankovich proposes that long term climatic cycles may
be due to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit and changes
in the Earth’s obliquity.
- 1925 – “Tri-State” tornado runs through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana
killing 695 people.
- 1935 – Watson-Watt and his assistant Arnold Wilkins published a report
in February 1935, titled The Detection of Aircraft by Radio Methods.
- 1935 – The “Great Labor Day Hurricane” kills 408 people. It is rated as
the most intense Cat5 Atlantic hurricane to make landfall.
- 1934 to 1937 – The Dust Bowl drought of the US plains region causes
harsh economic damage.
- 1937 – Army Air Forces Weather Service was established (redesignated in
1946 as AWS-Air Weather Service).
- 1941 – Pulsed radar network is implemented in England during WWII.
- 1948 – First correct tornado prediction by R. C. Miller and E. J.
Fawbush.
- 1950 – Hurricanes begin to be named alphabetically with the radio
alphabet.
- 1951 – WMO World Meteorological Organization established by the United
Nations.
- 1953 – National Hurricane Center creates a system for naming hurricanes
using alphabetical lists of women’s names.
- 1955 – NSSP National Severe Storms Project established.
- 1956 – The Weather Bureau creates the National Hurricane Research
Project.
- 1969 – Hurricane Camille, the second Cat5 hurricane to make US landfall
causes $1.4 billion in damage.
- 1970 – NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
established. Weather Bureau is renamed the National Weather Service.
- 1971 – Ted Fujita inroduces the Fujita scale for rating tornadoes.
- 1975 – The first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite,
GEOS, was launched into orbit. Their role and design is to aid in
hurricane tracking.
- 1980 – Mt. St. Helens erupts in Washington State.
- 1988 – WSR-88D type weather radar implemented in the United States.
Weather surveillance radar that uses several modes to detect severe
weather conditions.
