Here is a film from the 1950's. It is about Tornado Preparedness. You will notice no computers.
There is also mention made of a weather observer corp. I was a member of the first one for Kansas City, MO. I was in Civil Defense, in Kansas City, and I was in the USAF Ground Observer Corp. The USAF did away with the GOC, in 1959, and so we all became weather observers.
Later in life I was a police officer, in a small town, in Missouri. I would watch for tornados. The local volunteer fire department did an excellent job of watching for tornados.
When I worked hospital security we would watch for tornados. We also trained hospital employees on hospital policy during a "Code Gray."
I have been, for years, a member of SkyWarn.
I never have seen a tornado.
I was right in the middle of a "Microburst." That was in Lee's Summit, MO (May of 1996). I was working at Lee's Summit Hospital and it must have been about midnight. I was the only security officer on duty. I noticed the rain was blowing sideways. I had never seen anything like that before and then I heard on radio the police put out a tornado warning for the East side of Lee's Summit. I called the hospital on duty house supervisor and told her we needed to go into Code Gray right now. She told the PBX operator to page the code and we went into Code Gray.
The hospital received no damage. There were a lot of houses that did get heavy damage in the Raintree Lake area. We got a few people into the hospital with minor injuries.
I had never heard of a "Microburst" until the weather department said later that it was not a tornado but a microburst.
In the vintage video two of the weather department forecasters ae Joe Galway and Don House. The film must be dated about 1956.
