In 1936 and 1937, the Section on Climatic and Physiographic Studies in the Soil Conservation Service initiated a microclimatology project in central Oklahoma that employed 200 farmers across three counties to take weather observations every half hour between 7am and 7pm. From that data, the project prepared 120 to 200 maps per day. As described by the head of the section, C.W. Thornthwaite, the project made possible “an intimate portrayal of the life of a storm, to follow in detail the changes in wind, temperature, relative humidity, and cloudiness of its career.” Although the benefits of the project to climatology were widely touted, the project was undertaken as a relief effort for farmers affected by persistent drought and soil erosion—i.e., the “Dust Bowl”—over the previous three years. In this paper, I will examine the organization of labor in the project—the selection of observers, the observation procedures, and efforts to explain to the observers the climatological conclusions resulting from their work—in order to understand the manner in which the changing nature of work, from agricultural to scientific, engendered a changing relationship to the land and the climate. I will argue that the practices of tracking of a rainstorm’s “career” and “life history” were intimately to the practices of tracking population migration and land use planning during the New Deal.