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A century ago, waiting for the forecast was like waiting for a train, literally. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook.

In the 1870s, some of the earliest weather forecasts were printed in newspapers, which mostly went to people in cities. But farmers and other country folkat least the ones who couldnt read the sky themselvesprobably needed to know more about the upcoming weather than people in the city. So how, the weather bureau wondered, do we get the word out to the country.

Flags were one answer. Starting in 1871, the US weather bureau posted forecast flags on buildings, trains and train stations, on river steamers, any place that had access to telegraphed information. A red flag warned of high winds; a white flag with black square in the center signaled a cold snap; a blue flag meant rain or snow.

The Canadian weather service had another idea: use the railroad trains themselves. Railway agents in Toronto received the morning forecasts via telegraph then affixed large metal discs to either the sides of outbound trains headed west or east. The disc's patterns, borrowed from astronomical images, informed farmers working in fields along the tracks of the expected weather conditions: a full disc looking like a full moon meant sunny skies; a crescent moon warned of showers; and a star, meant prolonged rains.

Unfortunately, local rail workers too often neglected to update the discs, and it didnt take to long for farmers in the fields to just ignore the outdated forecasts. Within a decade of its inception, the system was dropped. But still, even today with all our communication technology, the process of getting forecast information into the minds of the public, city or country, is one of the weather services biggest challenges.

Thanks to contributing writer Keith Heidorn for todays Weather Notebook, which is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory, mountwashington.org.