On May 23, 1967, a highly active sunspot region, McMath Region 8818, produced a series of solar flares. The events were massive, including a rare white-light flare and one of the largest solar radio bursts ever recorded – so large, in fact, that they jammed the U.S.’s Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. The system was designed to detect Soviet weapons, and this unprecedented interference was interpreted as an incoming Soviet attack. Military leaders told nuclear-armed aircraft to be “ready to launch.” However, the solar forecasting staff at the Air Weather Service at NORAD, including on-duty forecaster Captain Lee Snyder, acted quickly, providing real-time information that convinced commanders that space weather was to blame – not Soviets.
The Air Weather Service had originally provided terrestrial meteorology support for the military, but since Sputnik in the 1950s had been transitioning to space weather monitoring. Its services grew through the 1960s, but the Solar Forecast Center had only been operating since 1965. The narrowly avoided nuclear war was a major catalyst for the rapid expansion of space weather support for the military throughout the rest of the ’60s and the ’70s.
