Early attempts to record weather information can be traced back to Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution, who, after a tornado in Jefferson, Illinois, in 1855, requested information about the storm from the Daily Democratic Press in Chicago. Organized large-scale weather recording by the Smithsonian led to the creation of the U.S. Signal Service, the earliest predecessor of the modern-day NWS. In 1869, Cleveland Abbe, then director of the Cincinnati Observatory, began developing and issuing public weather forecasts, calling them "probabilities," using daily weather observations collected via telegraph. This effort was undertaken in cooperation with the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and Western Union. Increase A. Lapham of Wisconsin lobbied Congress to create a storm warning service, having witnessed the destructive power of storms in the Great Lakes region. On February 9, 1870, the first official weather service of the United States was established through a joint resolution of Congress signed by President Ulysses S. Grant, with a mission to provide meteorological observations and storm warnings on the Great Lakes and seacoast. The agency was placed under the secretary of war, as Congress felt "military discipline would probably secure the greatest promptness, regularity, and accuracy in the required observations." Within the Department of War, it was assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Service under Brigadier General Albert J. Myer, who named it the Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce.
In November 1870, Myer hired Lapham as the first civilian assistant, but Lapham left less than two years later. Abbe joined as the second civilian assistant in January 1871 and began developing a national forecasting system, which he began issuing the following month. Throughout his 45-year career with the weather service, Abbe urged continued research in meteorology to provide a scientific basis for forecasting. The agency became a civilian enterprise in 1891, as part of the Department of Agriculture, and was officially named the U.S. Weather Bureau. Under the oversight of that branch, the Bureau began issuing flood warnings and fire weather forecasts, and published the first daily national surface weather maps. It also established a network to distribute warnings for tropical cyclones and a data exchange service with Europe.
The first Weather Bureau radiosonde was launched in Massachusetts in 1937, prompting a switch from aircraft observation to radiosondes within two years. The Bureau prohibited the use of the word "tornado" in its products out of concern for inciting panic until 1938, when it began disseminating tornado warnings exclusively to emergency management personnel. In 1940, the Bureau moved to the Department of Commerce. Margaret Smagorinsky was hired as the Weather Bureau's first female statistician in 1941. On July 12, 1950, Bureau chief Francis W. Reichelderfer officially lifted the agency’s ban on public tornado alerts, noting that a “good probability of verification” existed when issuing such forecasts. After criticism for refusing to provide public tornado warnings, the Bureau issued its first experimental public tornado forecasts in March 1952. In 1957, the Bureau began using radars for short-term forecasting of local storms and hydrological events.
The Weather Bureau became part of the Environmental Science Services Administration in August 1966. The Environmental Science Services Administration was renamed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on October 1, 1970, with the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act, at which time the Weather Bureau became the National Weather Service.
In 2025, the NWS was deeply affected by cuts to NOAA under the second presidency of Donald Trump, including staff layoffs and cancelled university contracts. Entering hurricane season, 30 National Weather Service offices were without a chief meteorologist. On August 28, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order dissolving the NWS Employee Union and determining the National Weather Service "to have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work." The White House justified this decision by stating that the National Weather Service provides weather data used to plan U.S. military deployments.
The primary network of surface weather observation stations in the United States is composed of Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS), a joint effort of the NWS, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Department of Defense (DOD). The NWS also maintains connections with privately operated mesonets and provides funding to the CoCoRaHS volunteer weather observer network. Marine observations are acquired through a network of buoys and coastal observing systems operated by the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), and through the United States Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) program. Upper air data is obtained from 92 radiosonde locations in North America and ten sites in the Caribbean, with balloons launched daily.
The NWS uses a multi-tier system for forecasting hazardous weather, including outlooks, advisories, watches, and warnings. Special Weather Statements are issued for unusual events, and Impact Based Warning systems are used to convey the potential severity of storms. Until 2007, warnings were delineated by geopolitical boundaries, but now use storm-based warnings defined by polygonal shapes.
The WSR-88D Doppler weather radar system, also called NEXRAD, was developed during the mid-1980s and fully deployed by 1997. The NWS uses the Advance Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) to process and disseminate weather information. In 2016, the NWS increased the computational power of its supercomputers to address criticisms regarding forecast accuracy. The Next Generation Global Prediction System project aims to improve forecast quality.
As of 2016, the NWS was organized into National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), which includes the Aviation Weather Center, Climate Prediction Center, Environmental Modeling Center, Weather Prediction Center, Ocean Prediction Center, Storm Prediction Center, and National Hurricane Center. It also includes 6 Regions, 122 Weather Forecast Offices, 21 Center Weather Service Units, 13 River Forecast Centers, and the Space Weather Prediction Center.
The NWS has faced proposals to privatize its services, including a 1983 proposal to sell weather satellites and outsource services, and a 2005 bill to prohibit the free distribution of weather data. During the Trump administration in 2025, mass layoffs and appointments of individuals with conflicts of interest raised concerns about further privatization efforts.
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