The Birth and Early Years of the Storm Prediction Center

Abstract

An overview of the birth and development of the National Weather Service?s Storm Prediction Center, formerly known as the National Severe Storms Forecast Center, is presented. While the center?s immediate history dates to the middle of the twentieth century, the nation?s first centralized severe weather forecast effort actually appeared much earlier with the pioneering work of Army Signal Corps officer J. P. Finley in the 1870s. Little progress was made in the understanding or forecasting of severe convective weather after Finley until the nascent aviation industry fostered an interest in meteorology in the 1920s. Despite the increased attention, forecasts for tornadoes remained a rarity until Air Force forecasters E. J. Fawbush and R. C. Miller gained notoriety by correctly forecasting the second tornado to strike Tinker Air Force Base in one week on 25 March 1948. The success of this and later Fawbush and Miller efforts led the Weather Bureau (predecessor to the National Weather Service) to establish its own severe weather unit on a temporary basis in the Weather Bureau?Army?Navy (WBAN) Analysis Center Washington, D.C., in March 1952. The WBAN severe weather unit became a permanent, five-man operation under the direction of K. M. Barnett on 21 May 1952. The group was responsible for the issuance of ?bulletins? (watches) for tornadoes, high winds, and/or damaging hail; outlooks for severe convective weather were inaugurated in January 1953. An unusually large number of strong tornadoes, forecaster inexperience, and criticism regarding the unit?s products culminated in staff and policy changes after it was renamed the Severe Local Storms Warning Service (SELS) in June 1953. SELS moved from Washington to Kansas City in September 1954 in part to be closer to ?tornado alley? and to take advantage of existing nationwide teletype communication facilities. The unit also gained a new leader when D. C. House replaced Barnett as SELS chief early that year. House instituted changes that led to more accurate watches. He also fostered the development of a separate research and development unit, an effort which had been initiated by Barnett. SELS continued to grow as additional forecast and support staff were added through the remainder of the 1950s and 1960s. It was renamed the National Severe Storms Forecast Center (NSSFC) upon relocation to a new facility and the assumption of local and regional forecast duties in 1966. Meanwhile, the research group to which SELS had given birth in the mid-1950s left Kansas City and merged with the Weather Bureau?s Weather Radar Laboratory to form the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1964. SELS, renamed the Storm Prediction Center, joined NSSL in Norman in January 1997.