In Victoria, meteorological reports first appeared in the newspapers in 1856, when the Argus began publishing barometer and thermometer readings and reports on winds and rain, drawing on 'results deducted from the meteorological register kept at the Observatory, Surveyor-General's Office, Melbourne'.[22] The Sydney Morning Herald reported sunrise and sunset times and the tides from April 1857, while a table of 'meteorological observations' giving barometer and thermometer readings first appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser in December 1858.[23] As his network grew, Todd in 1859 promised monthly statistics, including rainfall reports, from fourteen stations, and reported his intention to obtain from the other colonies similar information that he planned to 'collect and publish periodically'. By the end of 1860, he was providing the Advertiser with regular weather reports (for example, 'Wind N.E., weather, fine, hot') from thirteen locations.[24] Newspaper weather reports, including growing numbers of intercolonial reports, soon became a regular feature in the eastern mainland Australian colonies. The service was seen as useful primarily for the 'nautical population', echoing northern hemisphere hopes for a storm warning service: 'If a peculiar state of the weather revealed itself at Adelaide, notice might be transmitted at once to Victoria and from thence to Sydney. The intervening stations might be warned of the change, and thus all would be prepared to provide against the consequences of a storm'.[25] In the event, forecasts were not published for another two decades and more, even though in Sydney, for example, by the early 1870s the weather information provided by the new Government Astronomer, Henry Chamberlain Russell, occupied almost a whole column in the press.[26]

Bureau of Meteorology