The history of weather observations and weather information in North America is certainly older than the arrival of Europeans to the western Hemisphere. Native indigenous peoples had been astute observers of the weather for centuries. Building seasonal clocks and monuments to help track the changes in temperatures and rainfall, Native peoples across the Southern part of what would become the united States were prodigious farmers and relied heavily of seasonal patterns. Founders of the Republic from Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Jefferson were keen recorders of the weather and tried their hand at weather forecasts. More organized approaches were left for a later era. Starting in 1849 the Smithsonian Institution supplied weather instruments to telegraph companies and establishes extensive observation network. Observations submitted by telegraph to the Smithsonian, where weather maps are created. By 1860, 500 stations are making regular observations. In 1869, Telegraph service, instituted in Cincinnati, began collecting weather data and producing weather charts. The ability to observe and display simultaneously observed weather data, through the use of the telegraph, quickly led to initial efforts toward the next logical advancement, the forecasting of weather. However, the ability to observe and forecast weather over much of the country, required considerable structure and organization, which could be provided through a government agency. In 1870, A Joint Congressional Resolution requiring the Secretary of War "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" was introduced. Congress passed the resolution and on February 9, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law. A new national weather service had been born within the U.S. Army Signal Service’s Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce that would affect the daily lives of most of the citizens of the United States through its forecasts and warnings for years to come. The on November 8, 1870 the First storm warning by U.S. Signal Corps weather service was issued for Great Lakes area by Prof. Latham of Milwaukee marking the first ever official weather forecasted warning issued in the United States.

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