FOREVER

Two Tornadoes Struck the Same Military Base Five Days Apart in 1948. It Changed the Way We Forecast Weather

- ASHLEY STIMPSON

On the evening of MARCH 20, 1948, Air Force meteorologist Captain Robert Miller arrived for his forecasting shift at the weather station on Tinker Air Force Base, a sprawling installation roughly five miles east of downtown Oklahoma City. After analyzing the latest weather maps and charts received via fax from Washington, D.C., Miller predicted that aside from occasional gusts of wind, the base was in for a "dull night." It would soon be clear just how far off the mark that prediction was.

Around 9 p.m., weather stations to the west of Tinker began reporting lightning. A half hour later, even Miller's crotchety AN-PQ-13 radar-which had been stripped from a World War II-era B-29 and repurposed as a meteorological instrument-was picking up thunderstorms that, as he later recalled, "looked vicious and were moving very fast."

The airfield had been used as an aircraft depot since WWII, and dozens of airplanes were parked around the jetways and outside the hangars. High winds could toss them around like toys. Scrambling to protect the planes, the 28-year-old Captain Miller pushed his hands through his high and tight, and ordered his backup forecaster to issue a thunderstorm warning to base personnel despite knowing it was likely too late to secure the aircraft.

Just moments later, a report from Will Rogers Airport, a few miles to the west, stopped the men in their tracks. "TORNADO SOUTH ON GROUND MOVING NE!" it read.

By 10 p.m., a tornado, illuminated by constant pulses of lightning, tore across Tinker Air Force Base as Miller and his colleague "crouched in near panic." Over the roar of the storm, they heard the toppling of vehicles, the snapping of airplane wings, and the crashing of glass as windows in the operations building surrendered to the tornado's pressure. Debris fell from the sky like rain.