Historical roots of modern tornado forecasts and warnings

Although accounts of tornadoes occurred in ancient writings, few paid much attention to nature's most violent windstorm until the United States Army S ignal Corps's John Park Finley began writing about tornadoes in the 1880s. Finley used statistics he had gathered from a network of tornado ob,observe rs and a study of previous tornadoes that had occurred throughout the count ry to compile a list of rules for tornado prediction. The Signal Corps in 1 884 allowed Finley to issue trial tornado forecasts, but the fear of public panic led the chief signal officer to ban the use of the word "tornado." F inley and his supporters believed the statistics verified the effectiveness of tornado forecasting, but the corps, beset by internal conflicts, ended the experiment in 1886. The Agriculture Department, which assumed jurisdiction for the civilian-con trolled Weather Bureau in 1890, continued the ban on the use of the word to rnado in forecasts until 1938. In spite of the loss of thousands of lives t o tornadoes during, this period, the Weather Bureau not only failed to enco urage research on the subject but also failed to institute any type of fore casting or warning system. Residents in tornado-prone areas learned to rely on signs in nature and their own senses to warn of approaching severe weat her. A systematic approach to tornado forecasting and warnings was as nonex istent in 1940 as it had been in 1870.