Professor Cleveland Abbe of the Cincinnati Astronomical Society realized the value of plotting weather reports received by telegraph. A series of storms in 1865 and 1866 had sunk over 3000 ships on the Great Lakes and Abbe knew that the telegraph could be used to detect and forewarn about these killer storms. Joseph Henry and the Smithsonian Institution had established an excellent reporting network, but the Civil War had interrupted the program and it had not recovered. Abbe assembled a partnership of the Associated Press, Western Union and the remaining Smithsonian observers. The reports were to be telegraphed to Abbe who would prepare a national weather summary. The summary would then be made available to newspapers across the country.
On September 1, 1869, as Abbe prepared to write the first report, the response was less than what he wanted. Only two observations were available. The network would grow in numbers and a week later Abbe was able to issue his first Weather Bulletin of the Cincinnati Astronomical Observatory. There would be the first public weather forecasts, issued for the local Chamber of Commerce in the Ohio city. Abbe brought to bear the resources of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, the fledgling telegraph companies and the Smithsonian’s pre-war observation network to establish a weather observation reporting network by telegraph.
