Dayton Weather Bureau Records

The National Weather Service was established by a joint Congressional Resolution on February 9, 1870, which authorized the secretary of War to organize a meteorological service based on reports from military posts throughout the country. The telegraph is credited for aiding the advancement of operational meteorology during the 19th century. With the advent of the telegraph, weather observations from geographically distant locations could be collected, plotted and analyzed at one location. Before 1900, the meteorologists were administratively moved from the Army to the Department of Agriculture as the U.S. Weather Bureau. Between 1900 and 1910, sixty weather bureau stations were built across the United States.

The Weather Bureau constructed an office in Dayton, Ohio in July, 1911. It was relocated in 1923, and in 1935. It was temporarily closed from July 22, 1933 to January 31, 1935. A separate airport office opened at the municipal airport (current Cox Dayton International Airport) in August, 1940, the year that the U.S. Weather Bureau moved under the Department of Commerce. The Dayton office and the airport office merged at the airport in June, 1943. Upper air observations were transferred from Wright-Patterson AFB in May 1956, and operated from a separate office five miles from the airport station. This station was placed under National Weather Service contract in 1981 (the Weather Bureau was renamed the National Weather Service in 1967). Both offices were closed in 1995, and merged with the new office in Wilmington, Ohio.

Sources: History of the National Weather Service http://www.weather.gov/timeline (accessed April 9, 2015).

Weather Bureau/National Weather Service History in Ohio https://www.weather.gov/media/ilx/History/ohio_wb.pdf (accessed Oct 10, 2017).

Introduction: History of Weather Forecasting. National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/caha/shrs/chap1.pdf (accessed April 9, 2015).