The advances in weather radar over the past 25 years have been astounding. The tools now available to forecasters have greatly improved our ability to detect and warn severe weather. Now, everyone can get live radar feeds on their computers and smart phones. Of course, it wasn't always that way. 71 years ago the first tornado hook echo was observed, by chance, on a research radar in central Illinois. I wrote about this in a blog post on the 60th anniversary of the event. Here is the link to that post: