United States. President Ulysses Grant signs a congressional resolution authorizing the Secretary of War to establish the National Weather Service. Grant assigns it to the War Department both because he believes that only military discipline is capable of gathering the necessary data and making predictions, and because he believes such an effort is justified only during wartime. But it is with the terrible blizzard of January 12, 1888, a relatively warm day on the Great Plains of America, that the population and the government realize the usefulness of weather forecasting, especially for agricultural purposes. On January 12, 1888, temperatures suddenly drop by 30 or 40 degrees Celsius, bringing an unexpected snowstorm. The National Weather Service is transferred to the Department of Agriculture.
