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Weather Records in the California Room

 
The United States Weather Bureau opened an office in San José on October 1, 1905. The office and weather instruments were located in the Dougherty Building on South 2nd Street near San Fernando Street. This building was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, and all the instruments and records were lost.

The Weather Bureau opened a new office in the old Post Office Building at Market and San Fernando Streets on July 1, 1906. The Weather Bureau operated this station until August 1933 when federal budget cuts forced its closure. Local farmers and growers objected strongly to being deprived of local weather information and forecasts, but the closure stood.

The City of San José then offered to continue taking local weather observations. The Weather Bureau agreed, and all the weather instruments and records were transferred to City Hall, then located in Plaza Park in downtown San José. Observations were made by City Employees, a practice that continued when a new City Hall was built at Mission and First Streets in north San José.
 

 
View sample pages of official logs in pdf (download Adobe Acrobat Reader):

• Page 1 (3.5 Mb)
   
• Page 2 (4.7 Mb) 

The official logs record daily weather observations. Entries were written by hand. Hourly readings were recorded for temperature, precipitation, wind direction, and wind speed. (Hourly temperature readings were discontinued beginning July 1, 1943.) Daily totals and daily maximums/minimums were also tallied. General weather conditions were summarized in the "Notes" section, along with any unusual weather events.

The logs were transferred to San José Public Library's Main Library in January 2000. The City's official weather observation site is at the northwest corner of San Pedro and Mission Streets. The logs begin July 1, 1906, and run through December 31, 1962.

The logs may be viewed in the California Room at the Martin Luther King Library.