By recording and sharing local environmental conditions, Hello, Weather! is part of a long tradition of citizen volunteer weather observation.

In 1644 and 1645, John Campanius Holm, a Lutheran minister, was the first observer to take systematic observations in the American Colonies.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were serious weather observers, and George Washington took his last observation just a few days before he died.

Thomas Jefferson maintained an almost unbroken record of weather observations between 1776 and 1816. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson began to recruit volunteer weather observers throughout Virginia and by 1800, there were volunteers in six states across the newborn nation.

During the early and mid 1800’s, weather observation networks began to grow and expand across the United States. Although most basic meteorological instruments had existed for over 100 years, it was the telegraph that was largely responsible for the advancement of operational meteorology during the 19th century. With the advent of the telegraph, weather observations from distant points could be “rapidly” collected, plotted and analyzed at one location.

In 1849 the Smithsonian Institution began supplying weather instruments to telegraph companies and establishes extensive observation network. By the end of the year, 150 volunteers throughout the United States were reporting weather observations to the Smithsonian regularly. By 1860, 500 stations were providing daily telegraphic weather reports to the Washington Evening Star, and as the network grew, other existing systems were gradually absorbed, including several state weather services.

By 1891, the network of voluntary weather observers across the country had grown to 2,000 stations. [source - http://www.weather.gov/pa/history/timeline.php]

In 1933, the Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace told President Roosevelt that the Cooperative Program is one of the most extraordinary services ever developed, netting the public more per dollar expended than any other government service in the world. That statement is still valid today. It is estimated that their time totals over a million hours a year.

It was not until 1953 that a plan was established to evenly blanket the nation with weather observers. Dr. Helmut Landsberg of the Weather Bureau conducted a study with Iowa State University to establish a method of filling in the open spaces of this volunteer network. As a result of this study, it was determined that there should be one weather station every 25 miles for estimating rainfall within an accuracy tolerance of ten percent.

By 1990, the network had expanded to 10,000 sites. The most recent statistics estimate that there are 12,000 cooperative observers in the United States. Only about a third of them are paid, and the ones that do get paid receive a very small amount.
[source - http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lch/obs/cpm2+.htm]