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From Best Guess to Real-time Data Buoys


When Captain John Smith arrived at Jamestown, he could only estimate what weather to expect. He had no thermometer John Smith (invented in the late 1500's, and very fragile) and certainly no National Weather Service. He certainly used his years of sea-faring and his keen eyes to watch for storms, but he had no way to see beyond the horizon, nor did he have accurate weather instruments for his logbook.

Now 400 years later, we have state-of-the-art technology to monitor conditions around Jamestown and Chesapeake Bay. Jamestown Buoy A brand new data buoy (installed April 2007, in the James River) measures temperatures in and above the water, wave height, salinity and many other types of data, with updates every 10 minutes!

And now via the Internet, you can monitor Chesapeake's weather and water conditions from anywhere in the world.

Let's begin by looking at current temperatures.





Curriculum developed in part by   Terc















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Milestones in Meteorology

  • 1450 - Leone Battista Alberti develops first anemometer
  • 1606 - Galileo invents the thermometer.
  • 1643 - Torricelli invents the mercury barometer
  • 1654 - Ferdinando II de Medici initiates the first weather observing network in Tuscany, Italy.
  • 1849 - Smithsonian Institution establishes an observation network across the United States, with 150 observers via telegraph.
  • 1854 - Leverrier shows that a storm in the Black Sea could be followed across Europe and would have been predictable if the telegraph had been used.
  • 1890 - US Weather Bureau is created.
  • 1941 - Pulsed radar network is implemented in England during WWII. During the war, operators started noticing echoes from weather elements such as rain and snow
  • 1970 - NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established.
  • 1975 - The first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES, was launched into orbit.
  • 1998 - Improving technology and software finally allows for the digital underlaying of satellite imagery, radar imagery, model data, and surface observations.
  • 2007 - CBIBS data buoys commissioned.




The Conservation Fund - Chesapeake Bay Foundation - National Park Service
National Geographic - Sultana - Friends of the John Smith Trail
Email: cbibs@noaa.gov