Today is a significant anniversary in the history of severe weather forecasting: on this date in 1948, the first successful tornado forecast was made.

Until the late 1930s, the U.S. Weather Bureau's official policy prohibited the use of the word "tornado" in a forecast, fearing that it would cause panic. Even in the 1940s, few forecasts mentioned tornadoes. On March 25, 1948, Captain Robert Miller and Major Ernest Fawbush were forecasting at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. The weather maps that day looked very similar to those just five days before, when a tornado had struck the base. Despite the near-zero chance that a second tornado would hit the same place in the same week, the two officers mentioned the possibility in their forecast for that day. And a little after six o'clock, the unthinkable happened: another tornado struck the base, securing Miller and Fawbush's place in weather history.

In an interesting sidelight, fifteen years later, in 1963, Miller - by then a Colonel - came to Philadelphia to help set up the weather center at The Franklin Institute.