Iowa Weather Report Service: Iowa Time Machine October 1, 1875

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On October 1, 1875, a professor in Iowa City began watching the weather with an ambition that reached far beyond his own backyard. Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs made his first observations for what became the Iowa Weather Report Service, an effort to gather reports from across the state instead of relying on one person’s view of the sky.

Born in Holstein and educated in Copenhagen, he came to the United States in 1861 and joined the State University of Iowa faculty in the early 1860s. He taught chemistry and physics, researched minerals and the structure of atoms, and made laboratory work central to his teaching. In nineteenth-century Iowa, where a storm could matter greatly to farmers and travelers, he saw weather observation as another form of public-minded science.

He enlisted volunteer observers around Iowa and gathered their reports in Iowa City. His observatories included a site near Church and Clinton streets and a barn at his home near Capitol and Market streets; flags displayed at his house conveyed barometer readings to curious neighbors. The legislature recognized the service with an act in 1878, yet provided no building or director’s salary. Hinrichs kept it going largely with his own money and contributions from supporters.

In an 1888 paper, Hinrichs used the word derecho for a widespread straight-line windstorm, setting it apart from a tornado’s rotating winds. The term still matters to Iowans: on August 10, 2020, a derecho swept across the state, leaving extensive damage to trees, crops, buildings, and power lines. Modern instruments record far more than Hinrichs could, but identifying the kind of storm remains essential to explaining what happened. #Iowa #OTD #History #Weather #Meteorology