View of the office and radar tower in New Braunfels, TX.
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County Warning Area (CWA) of the Austin/San Antonio Weather Forecast Office.
Meteorologists at the Weather Bureau Forecast Office in Washington, D.C., 1926.
From the 1850s to 1926 weather records for Austin were collected at various locations throughout the City of Austin, as Cooperative Weather Stations, including the Engineering Building on the University of Texas campus. The University of Texas site collected data from 1883 to 1926. The first Weather Bureau Office was established in Austin in October 1926. The office was then moved to Austin Robert Mueller Airport in August of 1942. The office remained at the airport for 53 years, changing names to the National Weather Service Office in 1970. The office underwent drastic technological changes following the name change, first with the installation of a WSR-74C Local Area Warning Radar in the late 1970's, computers in the early 1980's, eliminating the teletype as the primary dissemination system. Further technological changes occurred through the mid 1990's.
From 1905 to 1951 weather records in the Del Rio Area were collected at various locations throughout the city as Cooperative Weather Stations. The Weather Bureau Office was established in 1951. The office changed names in 1970 to the National Weather Service Office. Technology changes occurred in the 1980s to the mid 1990's.
The Weather Service Meteorological Observatory in Hondo opened in the summer of 1971, as the site for the last of the National Weather Service's network WSR-57 radars. The WSR-57 radar's function brought radar coverage to the Texas Hill Country and South Central Texas. The radar, representing the 1940s and 1950s technology, underwent several modernization changes through the years to enhance its severe storm detecting and tracking capabilities. Advances in radar technology in the 1980s sat the development of a new Doppler radar, called the WSR-88D. The WSR-88D Weather Radar made the WSR-57 Hondo radar obsolete.
The National Weather Service Office in San Antonio began in the 1870s and 1880s at Fort Sam Houston as part of the U.S. Army's Signal Corps. In July 1891 Congress established the Weather Bureau terminating the U.S. Army's Signal Corps weather observing role. The first Weather Bureau Office was established in the downtown San Antonio business district. The Weather Bureau Office stayed in the downtown business district of San Antonio until January 1941, when it was moved temporarily to Stinson Field, and then later to the San Antonio International Airport. In 1970 the office became the National Weather Service Forecast Office. In the summer of 1971, the weather radar was transferred from San Antonio to Hondo. In 1972 the office was moved off the airport to a nearby office at the North Crown Building, 1.1 miles southeast of the airport. Technological change from teletype to computers followed from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, and continued from the late 1980's to the 1990's.
The current location of the office is adjacent to the New Braunfels Regional Airport. As part of the National Weather Service's Modernization and Restructuring Plan, the San Antonio office was transferred to New Braunfels and consolidated with the three other offices (Austin, Del Rio, and Hondo) in 1994 and 1995. The office was renamed as the Austin/San Antonio National Weather Service Office, and continues as such today.
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