The Signal Service's missed forecast ahead of the March 1888 blizzard drew public criticism that damaged its standing before the 1890–91 civilian transfer

meteorologyinstitutionsmilitary-historyweather-bureau1888-blizzardforecasting

At 7 a.m. on March 11, 1888, the Army Signal Service — then led by Chief Signal Officer Adolphus Greely (claim-greely-arctic-disaster-survivor-ran-us-weather-bureau-1887-1891) — issued a 24-hour forecast of "fresh to brisk easterly winds, with rain" for the following night, according to historian Jamie Pietruska's peer-reviewed account. Hours later, what became known as the Blizzard of 1888 buried the Northeast United States, killing an estimated several hundred people. A subsequent New York Times editorial (November 26, 1888) "faulted the weather service for allowing the storm to arrive 'absolutely unheralded.'"

This episode predates, by roughly two years, the statute that moved weather forecasting out of Army hands (claim-1890-organic-act-split-civilian-weather-duties-from-army-signal-corps). It stands as a directly sourced, peer-reviewed data point for the claim that the Signal Service's public credibility had visibly cracked in the years immediately before the transfer — independent of, and considerably better-sourced than, the broader institutional-history narrative about the Service's 1880s reputational collapse recorded separately in claim-noaa-history-attributes-signal-services-1880s-reputation-collapse-to-multiple-factors.