We investigate parabolic Muckenhoupt weights and functions of bounded mean oscillation (BMO) related to nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations. The main result gives a full characterization of weak and strong type weighted norm inequalities for parabolic forward in time maximal operators. In addition, we give a Jones type factorization result for the parabolic Muckenhoupt weights and a Coifman-Rochberg type characterization of the parabolic BMO from Moser's seminal paper through parabolic Muckenhoupt weights and maximal functions.