Glasgow Weather Service Celebrates Diamond Anniversary

The National Weather Service in Glasgow celebrated their diamond anniversary on June 6. For 75 years, our local meteorologists have done our community a great service by providing each and every one of us what to expect from Mother Nature day in and day out.

Even though officially Glasgow has had a weather bureau for 75 years, the art of meteorology and gathering data has been around since shortly after Montana became a state and even before Glasgow was incorporated as a city. The United States Weather Bureau (USWB) has been in Glasgow since the beginning, recruiting J.J. Kerr as Glasgow's first weather observer on July 1, 1893. A Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) was sited in Glasgow shortly after the formation of the USWB and several prominent citizens volunteered as COOP observers including the first county attorney, a mayor, a probate judge, a war hero, a couple of postmasters and several pioneer business leaders. With no real background or knowledge of weather, they took it upon themselves to record temperatures as well as precipitation amounts.

In 1943, the Weather Bureau Office was opened in the current First Bank Building, 501 1st Ave S. This office provided upper-air and surface observations for weather analysis and urgent aviation needs. There were four rooms in the northwest corner of the bank building on the second floor which housed the weather office. A stairway and roof vault was constructed to permit the six weather personnel and one official in charge (OIC), who were mostly women, access to the roof facilities and instruments. An inflation shelter for the upper-air balloons was built next to the roof vault. The office adopted a full 24/day schedule on Jan. 1, 1955.

According to former meteorologist-in-charge and Glasgow Weather Service historian Jim Rea, the Glasgow Weather Service was placed here in the middle of nowhere to fill the data void in upper air data due to the increase in aircrafts as a result of World War II. "Glasgow is such a valuable location meteorologically as you don't really know what's in a storm system that is moving east until it reaches the plains. Glasgow is a good spot to pick up these changes and be able to determine the storm's next moves," stated Rea.

In Oct. 1955, the office was relocated to the Glasgow Municipal Airport. The relocation was consistent with a USWB national policy of relocating downtown offices to airport sites to improve hourly aviation observations. The relocated offices were titled Weather Bureau Airport Stations (WBAS). The office took hourly aviation observations, synoptic observations, recorded the Glasgow climatic data and performed upper-air runs.

The Glasgow Weather office moved into the Glasgow International Airport terminal on May 5, 1969. The Glasgow WBAS was renamed the Glasgow Weather Service Office (WSO) shortly after the move. The office occupied the back half of the terminal building. It provided hourly aviation observations, synoptic reports, climatology readings and upper-air soundings. The Automated Surface Observation System (ASOS) was installed at the mid-runway site in 1993. When commissioned on April 1, 1994, the Glasgow ASOS was among the first in the NWS Western Region. ASOS changed the work routine of all NWS metrological technicians. It was truly the first step in the Modernization and Associated Restructure (MAR) of the NWS.

The NWS MAR was billed as the biggest change in the weather service since its creation. With the exception of the upper-air units, the NWS WSO technology was 30 years out of date. With the funding provided by MAR, Glasgow was finally able to get much needed upgrades and even received a new building. There were three components of the Glasgow MAR: the new facility, new technology and new staff. The weather personnel went from seven to 28, the new building was operational by August 1996 and technology just exploded. Computers and computer programing were updated, the Doppler radar became the keystone in technology, making the detection, intensity, motion and development of storms more easily visible on radars.

According to Rea, the MAR was perhaps the most dramatic change, but as technology evolves so does the weather service. Human judgment remains the most crucial link in the forecast process. Instruments measure parameters, computers calculate solutions, but people forecast the weather. For being in the middle of nowhere, the Glasgow WFO issues more severe weather warnings than all non-Montana Western Region offices combined, deals with more ice jam flooding than any other lower-48 weather offices and can even have flash floods from late season hurricane remnants. If there was ever a weather office for real weather forecasters, the Glasgow WFO is it.

Today, the National Weather Service is located at 92 Airport Road, has 21 employees, including an information technology pathways intern, gains upper-air data twice a day by launching radiosondes, is able to issue watches and warnings for severe weather before the storm even hits the area, provides Skywarn classes to allow the public to be observers, which fills in the gaps not necessarily shown in technology, and is open 24/7 for your weather needs.

If you want to know more about the history of the weather service or even want to learn more about what our local meteorologists do, feel free to contact them at 406-228-4042.