The Weather Notebook: Eye on the Sky

Eye on the Sky
Listen in RealAudio
Email your weather question

Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. This week marks the fortieth anniversary of one of meteorology's biggest events. On April 1, 1960, the first weather satellite - called TIROS - took off aboard a NASA rocket. A few hours later, the first televised pictures of earth were beamed to a control center in New Jersey. Scientists gathered there couldn't believe their eyes.

The TIROS (Television Infra-red Observational Satellite) series of meteorological satellites started in 1960 as an experimental sequence of ten "metsats". TIROS 1 had a 78 day life during which it took over 20,000 photographs. NOAA Photo Collection
People had dreamed for centuries about how the earth and its atmosphere might look from space. In 1860, the writer Jules Verne fantasized about "lunarnauts" traveling to the moon and watching rings of clouds circle the earth.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite, which prodded the U.S. to develop its own satellite network. Two years later, our Vanguard program got a satellite in orbit, but the photos weren't good enough to be usable. Scientists continued sending up rockets, trying to improve pictures, but they really dreamed of was a satellite that could stay in orbit and track weather features in real time.

Finally, the TIROS satellite made it into space, and it was a phenomenal success. On its very first day, meteorologists could follow a major storm across the northeast U.S. and Canada. Several weeks later, they got their first view of tornadic thunderstorms across Oklahoma. The program quickly grew with more satellites. At last, on February 13, 1965, one TIROS satellite took 450 pictures from around the globe. For the first time, we could see the whole world's weather from space on a single day.

Thanks to today's contributing writer Bob Henson and for more information about the TIROS satellite, visit our website at weathernotebook.org. Funding for our show comes from Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive.