What was the state of weather forecasting during the Civil War?
Actually, weather forecasting was in its infancy prior to the Civil War, and when the war began appropriations ceased, and service was mostly discontinued. Beforehand, going back to 1753, during the colonial times, the only country-wide organization was the Post Office. Benjamin Franklin, who was appointed Postmaster-General of the Colonies in 1753, used his contacts with postmasters and shipmasters for research on progression of cyclones and ocean currents. As we continue through the years, in 1817, Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes (1777-1834), a German meteorologist and mathematician, drew weather maps, invented isobars (1820), discovered cyclonic wind circulation, rediscovered progression of cyclones, and proposed a meteorological service for the study of storms. In 1834, James Pollard Espy (1785-1860), chairman of the joint committee to the American Philosophical Society and the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, established a network of observation stations to study storms. Weather maps
