The earliest known daily weather records for the Brownsville area date back to about 1850. These were begun as part of the operations of Fort Brown. Fort Brown was originally known as Fort Texas, and was renamed to honor an Officer killed by cannon fire from Matamoros, Mexico during the war between Mexico and the United States.
The collection of official weather records in the United States began under the Office of the Surgeon General. This was because the Army bases were connected by teletype land lines, and the Surgeon General collected daily reports from bases keeping track of disease outbreaks. Adding daily weather reports to these messages was a common sense thing to do.
On February 9, 1870, President Grant signed into law a resolution requiring the Secretary of War to provide meteorological observations at military stations and other states and territories. This agency was called the Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce, and was put under the Signal Corp of the Armed Services.
Generally complete rainfall records for Brownsville began in 1870, and generally complete temperature records began in 1878. There is enough missing data in records maintained by Fort Brown in the 1850s and 1860s that they are not used as historical data for climate purposes.
Weather records continued to be collected and recorded by the U.S. Army at Fort Brown from 1870 through October 1916. During this time, the agency was transferred by Congress to the Department of Agricultural, and renamed the Weather Bureau.
Brownsville weather records were taken at a private residence at 516 Levee Street from November 1916 until September 19, 1922, when an official Weather Bureau Office was established in the Combes Building, 1014 East Elizabeth Street. This office was relocated to the State National Bank Building at 1160 East Elizabeth Street on February 2, 1929, then was moved to the Federal Building, 1001 East Elizabeth Street in Brownsville in March 1933, and continued there until April 15th, 1943.
A Weather Bureau Airport Station was established at the Brownsville Municipal Airport on August 2, 1930. On April 1, 1942, the downtown office was consolidated with the Airport Station for record-keeping purposes, and the downtown office was closed April 15, 1943.
The agency was transferred to the Department of Commerce in 1940, partly in recognition of the importance of weather information and forecasts to general commerce, and especially the growing business of aviation. The agency continued to be called the Weather Bureau.
The Brownsville Office began taking twice daily upper air observations in June 1943. This involves the release of a weather instrument and small radio transmitter carried aloft by a hydrogen filled balloon. The balloons may reach heights up to 100,000 feet before bursting, and the attached instruments relay vital weather data to a tracking receiver on the ground.
This data is the basic input used by computers to generate first guess forecasts of future weather out to 10 days. Weather offices of nations around the world release similar balloons and instruments, all at the same time twice daily, so that the data can be shared to draw a picture of world wide weather patterns.
The 1960s saw the deployment of a new radar system, the WSR-57, specifically designed for weather detection. This was one of the first big jumps forward in technology for the Weather Service. The Brownsville WSR-57 was commissioned in March 1961, and was the 16th such radar installed around the nation.
The 1960s and 1970s saw technology increasing at a rapid rate, with the advent of weather satellites and high speed computers. The new computers allowed the complex equations that describe the motion of free air in the atmosphere to be solved in time frames that allowed their use in real time daily forecasting.
On November 3rd, 1966, equipment was first installed to begin measuring temperature and dew point electronically. Weather radio broadcasts directly from the Brownsville Weather Office also began in the 1960s.
In 1970, the Agency was renamed from the Weather Bureau to the National Weather Service, but remained a part of the Department of Commerce.
The combined offices were located in the airport administrative building until 1972, when a new terminal building was constructed. The Brownsville Weather Service Office occupied a spacious suite of offices specifically built for it in the new terminal building.
Since the United States is subject to a higher frequency of more varied types of dangerous and destructive weather phenomena than any other nation in the world, it has always been a leader in weather services. Agency officials realized in the 1970s that a massive effort was needed to get the latest technology into field offices and maintain our historic leadership in weather services.
By the mid to late 1980s, this initiative had begun to bear fruit, and the National Weather Service began a period of Modernization and Restructuring. When completed, this effort will have provided Weather Service field offices with state of the art technology, including new Doppler radars which provide data on both precipitation and wind movement, a new suite of weather satellites, automated surface weather observing systems, and new high speed computers to allow field offices to ingest and utilize the enormous data stream from the new equipment.
A new Automated Surface Observing Station (ASOS) was commissioned at the Brownsville Airport in May 1994. A similar system was commissioned at Miller Field in McAllen in October 1996, and another system was commissioned at the Harlingen Airport in November 1996.
A new WSR-88D Doppler radar was put into service at the Brownsville Weather Office in May 1995, and was commissioned in September 1995.
New weather satellites have been put in orbit during the past 2 years. The last leg of the field modernization will be the deployment of high speed computer workstations. These are in pre-production stage now.
To accommodate the new technology being installed, the Brownsville Weather Office began construction of a new building in January 1994. The building was completed in November 1994, but was not occupied until March 1995. The modernization of the National Weather Service and its field offices will continue through the remainder of the century, but the benefits of increased accuracy in warnings and forecasts are already being made available to the public.
When restructuring is complete, the Brownsville Weather Forecast Office will be responsible for all weather products for the 8 Deep South Texas Counties of Brooks, Cameron, Hidalgo, Jim Hogg, Kenedy, Starr, Willacy, and Zapata, and the adjacent coastal waters of the Lower Texas Coast out to 100 miles. The Brownsville staff look forward to continuing to serve the public of Deep South Texas with the exciting new technology now available in our beautiful new quarters.