During March of 1948 Tinker Air Force Base was hit directly by two tornadoes during a period of only five days. The first tornado was the most destructive, to that point, ever to occur in Oklahoma. The second storm caused considerable additional damage and was remarkable in another, more significant, way. The first operational tornado forecast had been issued by Air Force Officers E. J. Fawbush and R. C. Miller a few hours before the tornado moved across the base. This extremely unusual meteorological situation, two tornadoes hitting the same location within five days, coupled with the fortuitous forecast of the event, had a profound impact on the evolution of operational severe weather forecasting in the United States. These events eventually stimulated the initiation of public severe thunderstorm forecasting by the Weather Bureau.Miller often presented anecdotal accounts of the events leading up to the landmark forecast, for example, in seminars and interviews during a visit to the National Severe Storms Laboratory during March 1994. He often stressed that the remarkable similarity of the synoptic settings on 21 and 25 March 1948 helped give him and Fawbush the courage to issue the now famous forecast. In this paper the synoptic environments that led to the two tornado occurrences at Tinker are analyzed and discussed. There were indeed similarities; however, it is surprising how different many aspects of the storm settings actually were. Similarities and important differences are illustrated with a series of synoptic surface and upper-air charts. It is likely that development of a base severe weather plan following the tornado disaster of 20 March, in addition to the presence and exhortations of General F. S. Borum at the base weather station on 25 March, provided as great a motivation for the first tornado forecast as did the similarity of the synoptic settings.
The close knit world of the tornado and severe thunderstorm forecaster often seems somewhat demented to those not knowledgeable in this discipline. This apparent derangement is based on our seemingly ghoulish expressions of joy and satisfaction displayed whenever we verify a tornado forecast. This aberration is not vicious; tornadoes in open fields make us happier than damaging storms and count just as much for or against us. We beg your indulgence, but point out the sad truism that we rise and fall by the blessed verification numbers. There is a fantastic feeling of accomplishment when a tornado forecast is successful. We are really nice people but odd. ROBERT C. MILLER, COLONEL, USAF March 20, 1948. I was assigned forecasting duty in the Tinker Air Force Base Weather Station, under command of Major Ernest J. Fawbush (E.J. to me), on the first of March 1948 [Fig. 1]. The evening of March 20th, while on the evening shift, I was rudely awakened to the sometimes vicious vagaries of Mother Nature. There were two of us on shift that night. My backup forecaster was a Staff Sergeant, also new to the Tinker Weather Station. We analyzed the latest surface weather maps and upper charts and arrived at the sage conclusion that except for moderately gusty surface winds, we were in for a dry and dull night. We were not astute enough to note that the upper-air analyses, received in completed form over the facsimile net from the USWB in Washington, depicted erroneously analyzed moisture fields. We issued a Base warning for gusty surface winds up to 35 mph without thunderstorms, effective at 9 P.M. local time. This forecast gravely underestimated the gravity of the situation. Shortly after 9 P.M., stations to our west and southwest began reporting lightning and by 9:30 thunderstorms were in progress and, to our surprise, detectable only twenty miles to the southwest of the Base. Even on our crotchety old AN-PQ-13 radar (Originally intended and used as a bomb-aiming radar on B-29's in WW II, this radar was extensively employed for storm detection by Air Weather Service in the Postwar period. It had an ostensible range of 100 miles.), the leading thunderstorm cells looked vicious and were moving very fast. The Sergeant began typing up a warning for thunderstorms accompanied by stronger gusts even though we were too late to alert the Base and secure the aircraft. At 9:52 P.M. the squall line moved across Will Rodgers Airport 7 miles to our west southwest. To our horror they reported a heavy thunderstorm with winds gusting to 92 miles per hour and worst of all at the end of the message, ''TORNADO SOUTH ON GROUND MOVING NE!'' We had had it for certain! We could only pray that this storm would change course and move southeast. There was no such miracle and at 10 P.M. the large tornado, visible in a vivid background of continuous lightning, and accompanied by crashing thunder began moving from the southwest to northeast across the base. We watched it, not really believing, as it passed just east of the large hangars and the operations ...
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