Event name: How We Measure The Weather: A Brief History And Where We’re Going Next
Event time and place: 12/10/2025 at Edward St. John Teaching and Learning Center, Room 2204
W.E. Knowles Middleton, a notable meteorologist once said, “meteorology as a science can hardly be said to have existed before the invention of the barometer and thermometer.” James Hyde opens his seminar by completely disregarding this statement. Hyde claims the birth of meteorology began with the rain gauge. The rain gauge traces all the way back to 400-500 BCE in India, but wasn’t standardized till 1441 in Korea. Not till the 17th century did meteorologists capture temperature, pressure, humidity to forecast weather. In fact the earliest barometers were measuring humidity via horse hair. As we enter the 20th century, Hyde takes us to D-Day, when meteorologists delayed the invasion based on their understanding of storm systems. He argues that moment was when meteorology became operational, something that could save lives and was deserving of the people's trust. From there, he shifts to Maryland’s meteorology history. Originally Maryland’s climate data was manually recorded in logbooks at designated areas called stations all over the state. These records were incredibly detailed, yet today they remain undigitized and effectively inaccessible.
Hyde then contrasts this rich historical tradition with the modern landscape of automated sensors and backyard weather stations. While instruments today can record climate data every few seconds with no human intervention, it is ironically far worse than the manual collected data. The data is less detailed, suffers from poor siting, and often is skewed. Hyde puts it as “everything and nothing”, there is a lot of data, some good and some bad all poured in the forecasting systems. Hyde presents the Maryland Mesonet as a solution. The Mesonet is a network of carefully placed and professionally maintained stations meant to restore data quality, support emergency management, and rebuild a trustworthy climate record. Overall, the future of Maryland meteorology is on a positive trajectory.
I found Hyde’s main points convincing because he presented modern meteorological challenges within a broader historical context. His anecdote about the D-Day story illustrates how weather data is not merely academic but has real world applications that could potentially be life saving. By recalling a moment when a correct forecast prevented disaster, he emphasizes why accurate observations remain essential today. This creates a sense of urgency around climate data, something that might seem mundane to the average person. This sense of urgency led to me to find his points and call for better climate instruments a lot more convincing.
His comparison between human stations and the modern digital sensors was very persuasive. In the past people manually recorded extensive, detailed climate data, where now the modern digital sensors reduce climate data to just temperature, pressure, and humidity. As Hyde explains, the loss of detail becomes not just a technical issue but a cultural one, as decades of human labor and environmental history risk fading away simply because they are not digitized. We cannot understand climate trends if half our data is buried in notebooks or generated by poorly placed backyard sensors.
While Hyde makes a strong case for the Maryland Mesonet being the solution we desperately need, there are weaker parts of his argument. For example, he critiques the massive network of crowdsourced sensors for their inconsistent quality. His photographs of poorly sited instruments show the kinds of errors that can enter the data pool. However, research shows that crowdsourced data can be valuable when filtered. Hyde acknowledges quality-control challenges but does not fully consider whether modern technology could salvage some of this messy data rather than completely disregarding it.
Additionally, the discussion during the Q&A reveals that the relationship between data and decision-making is more complicated than the presentation suggests. Hyde points to the recent “rain versus snow” school delay incident earlier this month as an example of avoidable miscommunication. A zoom spectator, Louis Uccellini explains that the decision to delay opening was not made based on precipitation type but on ground temperatures before sunrise, in other words ice risk. This suggests that even that meteorological clarity does not always translate into policy clarity. This does not undermine Hyde’s main argument, but it does tell us that better data alone does not equal change.
Despite these minor issues, I did not observe any major logical fallacies. Hyde’s arguments were rooted in historical fact and technical realities. His vision for the Mesonet seems both practical and effective, especially when he discussed expanding specialty networks, developing low-cost instruments, and implementing AI to recreate missing climate history.
Ultimately, the presentation succeeds because it presents meteorology not simply as a science of weather but as a science of people. Those who recorded the weather in the past, those who depend on accurate forecasts today, and those who will inherit the climate challenges of tomorrow.