John Park Finley

John Park Finley (April 11, 1854 – November 24, 1943) was an American meteorologist and Army Signal Service officer who was the first person to study tornadoes intensively. He also wrote the first known book on the subject as well as many other manuals and booklets, collected vast climatological data, set up a nationwide weather observer network, started one of the first private weather enterprises, and opened an early aviation weather school.

He was born on April 11, 1854 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He died on November 24, 1943 in Battle Creek, Michigan.

The University of Oklahoma holds a large collection of Finley's publications. Here are some selected works, which may or may not be contained in said collection:

• Finley, J. P. (1881). The tornadoes of May 29 and 30, 1879, In Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, and Iowa. Prof. Paper No. 4, U.S. Signal Service.
• Finley, JP, WB Hazen (1884). Charts of Relative Storm Frequency for a Portion of the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. Army Signal Office.
• --- (1884). Report of the character of six hundred tornadoes. Prof. Paper No. 7, U.S. Signal Service, 116 pp.
• --- (1887). Tornadoes: What They Are and How to Observe Them. Insurance Monitor Press, New York, 196 pp.
• --- (1889). State Tornado Charts. Amer. Meteor. J., 5.