Longest running national weather forecast

The longest-running weather forecast is the Shipping Forecast (originally the Storm Warning Service), which has been distributed in various forms by the UK Met Office (formerly the Meteorological Department) since 6 February 1861. With the exception of a brief period of inactivity in 1866–1867, these foul weather warnings have been produced continuously for 163 years 287 days.

The origins of the Shipping Forecast can be traced back 25 October 1859, when a massive storm swept across the British isles. A total of 343 ships were sunk over three days, including the ironclad passenger steamer Royal Charter, which went down with the loss of 444 lives.

Up to this point the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade, established in 1854, had been tasked with simply collecting weather data. Observation stations would take readings and send them to the central office in London, often by mail. The head of the department, Robert FitzRoy, a former Navy captain, felt that this was not enough, and that the department needed to actively analyse the information they were getting and provide warnings when the signs of a storm were seen.

Over the next year, FitzRoy undertook a project to rework the department's existing observation infrastructure. Each station was connected to head office by telegraph, allowing for observations to be received almost instantaneously. He also made an agreement in April 1860 to share information with his French counterpart, Urbain LeVerrier.

By December 1860, FitzRoy had 13 telegraph-connected weather stations in the British Isles, and data from another five in France. Most importantly, if the signs of a coming storm were spotted, the same telegraph network was then used to pass warnings to the relevant observation stations, who would distribute them locally and raise signals on masts visible from nearby harbours.

The first of these storm warnings, "Caution – Gale threatening from south-west, and then northward" was sent to stations in Aberdeen, Hull, Yarmouth and Dover on 6 February 1861. Unfortunately, the area that was worst affected by the ensuing storm – along the east coast from Newcastle upon Tyne to Whitby – was not yet covered by FitzRoy's warning system. According to contemporary reports, 135 vessels were lost. FitzRoy wrote letters to several newspapers in the aftermath suggesting this figure would have been far lower if he had the resources to distribute his warnings more widely.

By the summer of 1861, FitzRoy's department was receiving data from 43 stations in the British Isles and 18 stations around Europe (including as far afield as St Petersburg in Russia and Madrid in Spain). With this increased number of observation points, and a few years of weather data to compare it to, the Meteorological Department began distributing a simple two-day forecast along with the daily weather summaries that were wired to British newspapers.