When Mother Nature gets angry and wreaks some vengeance on the earth, there are people and agencies to call for advice and help. Good government develops systems to support its people in troubled times. This year has certainly tested those systems with outbreaks of lethal weather patterns – tornadoes, hurricanes, rising seas and inland floods – just to chronicle the last month. People watch the weather reports at least as much as they watch the world news. That is because they are amazingly accurate at showing storm patterns and predicting where those storms will be moving.

It wasn’t always so. As a child in the 1950’s, I remember seeing the television weatherman on the nightly news. On a simple whiteboard, he sketched a caricature he called “Uncle Weathby” and drew his outfit to include a sun hat or a rain umbrella or some other illustration that clued the TV audience to what the next day’s weather would be. There were no colorful interactive storm front maps showing the American versus European models of approaching weather disasters. Yet, by my childhood, we did have more skill in weather prediction than Uncle Weathby. A big reason was the genius of a nineteenth century Newburgh native, Albert Myer.

Albert James Myer was born here over his parents’ watch and clock shop on Water Street in 1828. If you have passed Fort Myer, Virginia, you know his name. If you have successfully followed the National Weather Service maps, you owe him gratitude. If you have a relative who ever served in the U.S. Signal Corps, you are aware of his innovations. If you look out over a harbor and see the familiar combinations of red or white and black storm signal flags you are following Myers’ guidance.

Albert showed many artistic and scientific talents growing up and went to work for the New York Telegraph Company as a young teenager. He sought out a college education while continuing to work in a telegraph office and graduated from Geneva College (now Hobart) in 1847. He continued to his master’s degree and wrote his thesis on “A New Sign Language for Deaf Mutes” in which he advocated for his design of a visual signaling system based on the wig-wag communication of Native American tribes. Although his professors were less than encouraging about his theory, his innovative “motion telegraphy system” would come to be a crucial winning tactic in the Civil War, where waving flags in specific patterns could be seen over long distances across battlefields. Albert went from his master’s degree into medical college and became a 24-year-old surgeon in the Union Army. He tried out his flag signaling to good advantage in a few skirmishes down south and patented his system. The Army tried the Myer flag signal system to alert toops in other locations, especially in New York Harbor and adopted it, raising Albert to the rank of major and making him the Army’s first signal officer.

Still, the U.S. Signal Corps is not all we have to thank Albert Myer for. He also founded the U.S. Weather Bureau, now the National Weather Service. In the 1870’s Myer could see the opportunity to observe and report the movement of storms, like enemy soldiers on a battlefield, as the next logical peacetime step for the U.S. Signal Service. Storms were a national enemy too. Commercial fortunes were lost and the economy was set back again and again when weather ruined crops or sank ships loaded with goods.

Not only did General Myer work on ways to announce approaching weather with signals out in the field or on the shore, but he devised far better ways to track and report storms than what had existed. He researched instruments known to aid in weather prediction and invented many more. On January 1, 1871, under Myer’s direction, the War Department issued its first weather map labeled by Myer “for the benefit of all.” By May 5th that year, the New York Herald published Myer’s first U.S. Army forecast for the upcoming 24 hours.

Previously, weather was reported as it happened or afterward. He reached out and collaborated with scientists worldwide. In the Pacific and in the Caribbean, Myer even found interested colleagues among Jesuit missionaries who wanted to join the work of forecasting with scientists from all over Europe. Priests with nicknames like Father Typhoon from Manila and Father Hurricane from Havana became regular contributors to the world’s weather mapping. Weather maps traced with the isobars of approaching fronts began appearing in newspapers around the country and then the world.

Today’s weather maps and storm signals all owe their origins to a Newburgh native, Albert J. Myer.