We lucked out this week.  If temperatures would have been in the 20s or low 30s, we could have had a foot or more of snow across a good chunk of South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Fortunately, it was warm and we had rain instead of snow... most places did, anyhow.  

100 years ago today, however, it was a different story.  A big system moved across the central plains and cold air was much more abundant.  21 inches of snow fell in Sioux Falls with  strong northwest wind gusts to 50 mph creating blizzard conditions. 

The technology we have today makes forecasting a storm like this much easier.  I'll admit, the forecasts aren't always perfect, but if you think we're wrong a lot now, imagine what the forecast accuracy was like one hundred years ago.  There was no radar, no satellite, no weather balloons for upper-air measurement, no hourly observation network, no computer forecast models, etc. Weather observations were taken once daily (even less frequently in many rural areas) and sent to the US Weather Bureau in Washington, DC via telegraph. . 

Here's a link to an image of the February 9, 1909 US weather map. If you want to see a higher resolution version, go to the NOAA Daily Weather Map Archive.   You can pull daily weather maps all the way back to 1871.  You'll need to download the DjVu plug in for your browser to see the maps.  Don't worry, it's a quick and safe install.  Here's the link.

Check them out and you'll see that weather forecasting has come a long way, baby!