National Weather Service marking 154 years since being started by Ulysses S. Grant

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Friday marks 154 years since the National Weather Service began.

On February 9, 1870 President Ulysses S. Grant signed a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the Secretary of War to establish a national weather service. It was “to provide for taking meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent, and at other points in the States and Territories…and for giving notice on the northern lakes and on the seacoast, by magnetic telegraph and marine signals, of the approach and force of storms.”

Weather was also important more than one hundred years before to many of the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson purchased a thermometer from a local Philadelphia merchant while in town for the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. He noted the high temperature in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776 was 76 degrees.

George Washington also took regular observations. The last weather entry in his diary was made the day before he died.

In Wilmington, sporadic snowfall observations began on December 1, 1870, with daily precipitation records starting January 1, 1871 where Floriana stands today.