The agency was known as the United States Weather Bureau from 1890 until it adopted its current name in 1970. As the NWS is an agency of the U.S. federal government, most of its products are in the public domain and available free of charge.
About National Weather Service in brief
The National Weather Service is a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration branch of the Department of Commerce. The agency was known as the United States Weather Bureau from 1890 until it adopted its current name in 1970. The NWS performs its primary task through a collection of national and regional centers, and 122 local Weather Forecast Offices. As the NWS is an agency of the U.S. federal government, most of its products are in the public domain and available free of charge. In 1957, the Bureau began using radars for short-term forecasting of storms and hydrological events, using modified versions of those used by Navy aircraft to create the WSR-57 network. The Weather Bureau became the Environmental Science Services Administration when that agency was formed in August 1966. It became the National Weather Bureau on October 1, 1970, with the enactment of the Environmental Policy Act of 1970 with the passage of the NEXRAD Act. It is the only agency in the world that provides weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the purposes of protection, safety, and general information. It was established by a joint resolution of Congress signed by President Ulysses S. Grant with a mission to take meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the States and Territories. In 1870, the Weather Bureau 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.
In 1869, Cleveland Abbe – who began developing probabilistic forecasts using daily weather data sent by the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and Western Union – was appointed as the Bureau’s first chief meteorologist. The first Weather Bureau radiosonde was launched in Massachusetts in 1937, which prompted a switch from routine aircraft observation to radiosondes within two years. The Bureau prohibited the word ‘tornado’ from being used in any of its weather products out of concern for inciting panic until 1938, when it began disseminating tornado warnings exclusively to emergency management personnel. On July 12, 1950, Bureau chief Francis W. Reichelderfer officially lifted the agency’s ban on public tornado alerts in a Circular Letter, noting to all first order stations that \”Weather Bureau employees should avoid statements that can be interpreted as a negation of the bureau’s willingness or ability to make tornado forecasts\”, and that a good probability of verification exist when issuing such forecasts due to the difficulty in accurately predicting tornadic activity. It would not be until it faced criticism for continuing to refuse to provide public tornado warnings and preventing the release of the USAF Severe Weather Warning Center’s tornado forecasts in March 1952 that the Bureau issued its first experimental public tornado forecasts. It has since issued more than 100,000 warnings and watches and warnings, including more than 1,000 tornadoes. It also issued the first daily national surface weather maps. The National Weather Services is a member of the American Meteorological Society.
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This page is based on the article National Weather Service published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 28, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
