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What is the earliest weather recording in Salt Lake and what was the temp and weather for that day?
Chris H.
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Finding anything on this was tricky! We may not be able to locate the record on the first day but we can get you some background information that would be of interest.
The information from the NWS here in Salt Lake and the info from a technical memo from NOAA have some contradictory statements about our records but mainly, they are in agreement. The NWS claims that Henry Phelps was the first person to take records. But the information is conflcting, it appears that William started taking the observations first, but Henry made them "official" in December of 1858. Either way, it was the Phelps family with William as the father and his son Henry that started recording observations.
According to the techincal report, the first weather observations were taken by a man named William W. Phelps in 1847, he came with the Brigham Young company in July of that year. For the 1850's and 60's he most likely took his observations at or near the property he had which was on the northwest corner of W. Temple and 100 south in downtown. Think of what's there now, the Salt Palace!
Phelps went to the legistlature in January of 1857 and wanted to create a Meteorological Observations office. He did so, and then become the operator of that office. He obtained weather instruments from the Smithsonian Institution and other sources and gave monthly weather observations to the Deseret News. It appears that the weather observations for some reason or another didn't become "official" until after this special office was formed.
Looking at some of these figures which are not online, I can tell you he didn't adjust the sea level pressure which we now do today, that's pretty wild. He has listed for December of 1857 that the monthly mean barometer reading was 25.70 inches of mercury. Also in that month the mean temperature was 33 F. Sky conditions were included; for example, he writes that on December 1st of 1857 it was "cloudy, spitting snow, one inch".
William Phelps died on March 6, 1872 and a professor from Salt Lake College, Marcus E. Jones took his data from 1847 to 1867 and summarized it. By March of 1874 the U.S. Army Signal Service started taking the observations not far from where Phelp's home was.
In 1891 the Weather Bureau was formed and those Army Signal friends became members of the Bureau.
The location of the weather observations for Salt Lake has changed a few times and although the records began in the 1800's the statistics we use are baed on airport weather records that began in 1928.
This information comes from the NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS WR-152.
Answered by KSL Meteorologist Dina Freedman.
