This Date in Weather History - ForecastingFail

 On this day over one hundred years ago President Taft was inaugurated. The then U.S. Weather Bureau, now National Weather Service, had fair, mild weather in the forecast. The weather did not comply and turned into the snowiest inauguration day to date, accumulating 10 inches in the Capital. The inauguration ceremony was forced indoors but the parade was still on. It took a reported 6,000 men to fill 500 wagons with 58,000 tons of snow for the route.   



Forecasting the weather is a tricky, inexact science even today and you can imagine how hard it must have been back then. Without computer models, daily weather balloon deploys or any of the other advantages we use in today's  forecast, they did the best with what they had. Despite their technological shortcomings, the men at the U.S. Weather Bureau were of course to blame. Now I doubt this is the first time meteorologists were blamed for the weather, but it certainly put us in the limelight.


 Not sure if more funding was given to or taken away from the Weather Bureau due to this mistake. Unfortunately it was probably the latter.