In a world before forecasts, people relied on simply watching clouds or even observing animal behavior to predict storms. When “weather frogs” climbed up a little ladder in a jar with water, for example, it supposedly predicted good weather; if the frog climbed down, people believed rain was coming.
In 1854, FitzRoy, by then a vice-admiral, established the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade. The organization, later called the Met Office, initially produced wind charts intended to help boats reduce their sailing times. In 1859, the British government gave FitzRoy the authority to start issuing storm warnings, which he did using the electric telegraph, a new technology. He started sending his predictions to newspapers.
After the initial August 1 forecast, weather reports quickly became very popular and syndicated in publications around England. It wasn’t just fishermen and sailors, traditionally affected by the weather, who availed themselves of the forecasts. People involved in organizing events like county fairs and flower shows obsessively followed them as well. Some people even used the forecasts for more speculative purposes, like picking which horse to bet on in races, depending on how the weather might affect track turf.
