Adolphus Greely
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You'd think weather forecasting would be one of the most innocent, even honorable of professions - but back in the 1880s, our nation's weather service was a hotbed of scandal and corruption. Things got so bad that the federal government decided that only a national hero could clean house - and luckily there was a hero, Adolphus W. Greely.

Adolphus W. Greely. Photo courtesy of the Home of Heroes

Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

A Civil War veteran and career soldier, Greely attained heroic status as the leader of America's first official expedition to the Arctic. With a crew of 25, Greely set out northward in 1881 primarily to conduct meteorological observations, and he made it farther north than any preceding expedition. But during the severe winter of 1883, after relief parties twice failed to reach him, seventeen of Greely's men froze or starved to death. When he returned home with the surviving crew in 1884, Greely became a celebrity. And so, three years later, when the government was shopping for a hero to straighten out the weather bureau, which was then part of the Army Signal Corps, Greely was their man.

It seemed like a brilliant idea - but unfortunately it didn't work. Infighting, finger-pointing and lousy weather predictions continued. Greely couldn't reconcile warring factions and he wouldn't reassure Congress that forecasts would improve anytime soon. Finally, in 1889, a disgusted President Benjamin Harrison recommended that the Weather Bureau be removed from the Army and transferred to the Department of Agriculture. Though General Greely retained the post of chief signal officer, he lost the part of the job he valued most - forecaster in chief.

Thanks today to writer David Laskin of Seattle, Washington. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mt. Washington Observatory. It is supported by the National Science Foundation.