THE CLIMATE OF NEW YORK STATE 



W. M. Wu.sox and R. A. Mordopf 

 Department of Meteorology, Cornel] University, Ithaca, N. Y. 



Climate has been defined as the sum total of all the weather. It 

 is, therefore, only by observing the weather of a place or region 

 from day to day through a long period of years that a knowledge 

 of its climate may be obtained. 



New York State was particularly fortunate in having at the 

 head of its educational system men who, early in the nineteenth 

 century, recognized the importance of systematic weather obser- 

 vations. 



On March 1, 1825, the Board of Regents of the University of 

 the State of Xew York passed a resolution, directing that acad- 

 emies incorporated by the hoard should be furnished with a ther- 

 mometer and rain gauge, and later that participation in the 

 literature fund, which was under the control of the board, should 

 be contingent upon the maintenance of a series of weather observa- 

 tions in conformity with the rules adopted by a committee ap- 

 pointed by the regents. This committee consisted of Vice Chan- 

 cellor Simeon DeWitt, Gerrit Y. Lansing, and John Craig. 



More than fifty academies entered into this arrangement, and 

 the data thus secured were published from time to time in the 

 annual reports of the board. 



It is worthy of note that this was the first important attempt 

 made in this country toward an investigation of local climate. This 

 system was continued until the close of 1848, a period of about 

 twenty-four years, when a reorganization was effected with much 

 better equipment and larger financial support, to conform to the 

 more extensive and homogeneous system formulated by Professor 

 Joseph Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute at Wash- 

 ington, and designed to embrace the largest possible field of obser- 

 vation, both in the United States and adjacent countries. The 

 Xew York State Legislature continued to make liberal appropria- 

 tion- for the support of the part in this scheme assigned to Now 

 Fork until 1863, when tin- prosecution of the Civil War became of 

 such absorbing importance that this work, with other public* enter- 

 prises of a scientific nature, was sacrificed to the larger needs of 



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