Coastal Weather Station

Yesterday I wrote about a memorable, but short-lived, squall that churned up the water several decades ago. Over the years weather has had a major impact on the Outer Banks. Storms and hurricanes have caused shipwrecks, erosion, flooding, new inlets, and more than a few drownings.

In 1874 the US Weather Bureau recognized the importance and strategic location of the Outer Banks, and established a coastal weather station on Hatteras Island. The official Hatteras Weather Bureau Station was commissioned and occupied on January 1, 1902.The Weather Bureau operated there until 1946.

The Weather Station has been restored to its 1901 appearance, and is now operated as a welcome center by the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau through a partnership agreement with the National Park Service.

NPS Photo

You can read more about the US Weather Bureau on Hatteras Island here: https://www.nps.gov/caha/planyourvisit/uswbs.htm.

You can also read about Lucy Stowe who worked from 1943 until "she retired in 1980 from a 'storm-proof' reinforced concrete weather building in Buxton complete with weather radar, computerized instrumentation and data networking, and from a service that made forecasts using weather satellites and computerized numeric models."  This is the link: https://www.nps.gov/caha/learn/historyculture/lucystowe.htm.

Our latest Ocracoke Newsletter, a newspaper article published in 1923 titled "Quaintest Town in America," provides a fascinating glimpse of Ocracoke Island life a century ago. You can read it here:
https://www.villagecraftsmen.com/quaintest-town-america-n-c-island/ .