Professor Increase A. Lapham was an observer in the network of telegraphic weather stations established by Cleveland Abbe of the Cincinnati Astronomical Observatory. Abbe built the network in September 1869 to replace the pioneering Smithsonian weather network that had fallen apart during the Civil War.

Lapham was appalled by the loss of life on the Great Lakes in 1869 as a series of storm sunk thousands of ships and resulted in the deaths of thousands of sailors. Lapham petitioned his local Congressman to introduce a bill establishing a telegraphic weather service administered by the U.S. Government. The Congressman, Halbert Paine, introduced the bill. Such a service required military discipline, so Paine designated that the service would be under the control of the War Department. The agency was placed under the control of General Albert Myer, head of the Signal Office.

Myer would hire Increase Lapham to supervise the new warning service, which was mandated to provide warnings for the Great Lakes. A Milwaukee businessman, Lapham was a self-taught meteorologist, learning from the writings of per-eminent weathermen like William Redfield and Cleveland Abbe. The Signal Corps began taking observations of November 1, 1870.

On November 8, 1870, Lapham would issue the first storm warning, a cautionary forecast for the Great Lakes. The first bulletin read: “High wind all day yesterday at Cheyenne and Omaha; a very high wind this morning at Omaha; barometer falling with high winds today at Chicago and Milwaukee; barometer falling and thermometer rising at Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo and Rochester; high winds probable along the Lakes.”

Lapham would leave the following May when his business interests got in the way of his forecasts. He would be replaced by Abbe who would go on to head the signal service and the Weather Bureau for another 45 years.

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