by Robert C. Miller, Colonel USAF-Ret

Transcribed by Charlie A. Crisp from parts of an unpublished manuscript
(written middle to late 1970's)

I was assigned forecasting duty in the Tinker Air Force Base Weather Station, under command of Major E. J. Fawbush, on the first of March 1948. 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. In course of idle conversation we found we had much in common - we were both from Sunny Southern California and had no weather experience in the Midwest portion of the United States. 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.

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. 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 Rogers 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!"

The rest of this story can be found on the web at: Golden Anniversary.