Disaster Warnings: Tornado forecasting, it started with the USAF in 1948!

According to an April 1998 article written by a former historian with the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, James Crowder, tornado forecasting began in 1948, after two tornadoes touched down on Tinker Air Force Base (AFB), Oklahoma.

At one time Tinker AFB was used to store more than 2-thousand World War Two aircraft. The Twin Twister hit several of the P-47 Thunderbolts.

The first tornado struck on 20MAR1948, the second on 25MAR1948. The U.S. Air Force (USAF) weather (wx) forecasters on duty that day were new to the area, and were using an early form of wx radar that was actually a cannibalized bombing/navigation radar (AN-PQ-13) off a B-29 bomber! They had forecasted gusty winds, but 30 minutes after their forecast a storm popped-up on their bombing radar, and it produced a tornado.

This photo is dated 20MAR1948. C-54 transports now fraternizing with B-29 bombers.

Final damage cost estimate of the 20MAR1948 tornado was $10.25-million (in 1948 dollars), six people injured. The based commander, Major General Fred S. ‘Fritz’ Borum, was outraged at the lack of warning. The Major General was an armchair scientist, and known as an innovator and experimenter. Major General Borum ordered the creation of the first official tornado disaster preparedness plan, then he ordered the two top wx officers on base to do something never done before; forecast tornadoes.

Major Ernest J. Fawbush and Captain Robert C. Miller, the first to predict a tornado on 25MAR1948. Photo by April McDonald.

Major Ernest J. Fawbush and Captain Robert C. Miller were literal veteran wx-men, serving in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. Going by what James Crowder wrote, they seemed obsessed with the idea of formulating a way to determine if a thunderstorm would produce tornadoes. They worked almost non stop gathering as much data as they could, their ‘shop’ became the first severe wx warning research center in the United States. Then on 25MAR1948, while having lunch Fawbush and Miller noticed the wx changing much like it did five days prior, they notified their ‘higher-ups’. They, and the base commander, watched on that former B-29 radar as the storm system grew bigger. The Major General demanded a definite prediction about a possible tornado, “Are we going to have another tornado or not?”, they responded by giving the first ever tornado alert by simply saying “Yes; yes, sir. We are.”

However, almost two hours went by without a tornado, the USAF wx forecasters thought for sure their careers were over, then another hour went by and boom, the second tornado hit. While everybody was sheltering, the base commander stood in the doorway of his living quarters and watch the twister tear through even more aircraft.

Altus AFB, Oklahoma, a tornado shoved two massive C-5A Galaxy into each other. 49 buildings damaged, 27 people injured. USAF photo by Staff Sergeant Philip Schmitter, 11MAY1982.

Major Fawbush and Captain Miller were soon flooded with data from private sector wx-men, the Oklahoma City Weather Bureau, the National Weather Bureau, as well as the USAF’s Air Weather Service, and the U.S. Navy’s weather organizations. In February 1951, they established the USAF’s Severe Weather Warning Center on Tinker AFB. Of the 75 tornado predictions they made, 67 of them actually happened. They both had long careers predicting wx for the U.S. military/government. Major General ‘Fritz’ Borum retired from the USAF in 1954.