116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: The Gazette’s weather station
It sat on the roof, recording downtown Cedar Rapids temps, rainfall, wind from 1964 to 1975
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
To get a weather forecast these days, one need only check a website or check a cellphone app. That, of course, was not always the case.
In 1776, when Thomas Jefferson was in Philadelphia for the adoption of Declaration of Independence, he bought a thermometer and a barometer, one of the few in America at the time. He reported it was 76 degrees on July 4, 1776.
During the 1800s, weather observation networks began to grow in the United States. The addition of the telegraph, and its transcontinental line in 1861, allowed weather information to be shared widely and quickly, then plotted and analyzed.
In 1870, Congress created the U.S. Weather Bureau as an arm of the military. It was transferred to the new Department of Agriculture in 1890, where the department, in one of its first actions, tried rain-making experiments. Without success.
Meteorologists — the professionals who predict the weather and issue forecasts — formed the American Meteorological Society in 1920.
In 1940, the weather bureau was transferred to the Department of Commerce, where it remains today as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Its name was changed to the National Weather Service In 1970.
On April 1,1960, the world’s first weather satellite, TIROS I, launched, followed by TIROS II in November and TIROS III in 1963.
“Weather stations operated by weather bureau offices ... blanket all of Iowa’s 99 counties,” The Gazette reported in 1961. “The radar enables the stations to plot the course of all storm systems developing in or moving toward Iowa.”
The Gazette weather station
The Gazette has always provided weather information to its readers.
The first edition of The Evening Gazette, published by Lucian Post and Elbridge Otis on Jan. 10, 1883, carried a “Weather Bulletin” on page 4. The bulletin was written by H.D. Olds, who reported the temperature and barometric pressure readings at five points during the day.
Olds, a Civil War veteran, served as adjutant to the T.Z. Cook Post of the Grand Army of the Republic in Cedar Rapids. He assisted the city treasurer during tax time and, most importantly for this story, studied local weather and “appliances for noting it” for years, according to The Gazette.
By 1964, weather information for Gazette readers was obtained from instruments at the Cedar Rapids municipal airport. But there were significant variations between what was happening out in the open country by the airport and what was happening in the city.
That’s why The Gazette installed a weather station on the roof of its building at 500 Third Ave. SE that year. The wooden enclosure was easily visible to anyone traveling along Third Avenue.
The structure had slatted sides and contained a thermometer. A pole nearby was topped by a wind vane and an anemometer to measure wind speed. A “tipping bucket” was part of the rain gauge.
Pipes leading down to the first floor of The Gazette building carried wires that connected to equipment in the newsroom. The equipment recorded temperatures, rainfall and wind direction and velocity.
“Beginning Monday (April 6, 1964), The Gazette will be obtaining weather statistics for stories and ‘The Daily Record’ from its own downtown weather station,” the newspaper informed readers in its April 5 edition.
Discoveries
The equipment made some discoveries:
- During one rainy morning, the airport measured 0.29 inch of rain. The Gazette gauge showed a half-inch of rain in the downtown.
- One cold morning, the airport was 12 to 14 degrees colder than it was in downtown Cedar Rapids. Normally, it was only 2 to 4 degrees colder there than in the city.
- During a check of wind velocity, the downtown reading was 10 to 12 miles per hour and the airport reading was double that. A few hours later, they were the same.
The readings from the rooftop instruments were recorded and used by reporters in news stories until the weather station stopped operating Jan. 18, 1975.
The weather station was still on the roof in June 1977 when a reporter consulted it during an ominous thunderstorm during which the temperature dropped 5 degrees in five minutes.
That’s the last reference to the rooftop station in The Gazette.
Doppler radar
Real-time Doppler radar forecasts and warnings began in 1976. The next year, weather satellites were being used in preference to weather observations from U.S. ships.
At The Gazette, weather reports came from two National Weather Service stations, one in Marion and one at the airport. The monthly weather summaries the newspaper once published were based on their data.
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