Airman wins outstanding AMC Weather Airman of the Year

Published March 17, 2008
By Staff Sgt. Nathan Gallahan
407th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs

ALI BASE, Iraq -- A weather Airman here was chosen as the Air Mobility Command Outstanding Weather Airman of the year for 2007.

Staff Sgt. Brandon Healy, 407th Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron weather forecaster here, was surprised he won March 4.

"I don't really think about stuff like this so it always catches me off guard," said Staff Sgt. Brandon Healy. "I just let things roll. Awards and recognition come if they come, we always have a mission and that's where my focus is. If commanders award you for that -- rock on."

Sergeant Healy found out he won after he finished his weather briefing and his squadron commander stood up, coined him and told him the news.

"If I would have checked my e-mail earlier, I would have found out because my home unit sent me an e-mail about it," said the Buffalo, N.Y. native.

As for finding out he won the award in the Iraq instead of back home, he said "we're knee deep in the mission here, and an award like this gives a little more meaning to what we're doing, it hits you a little bit harder here."

"It doesn't surprise me that he won this, I'm just glad I don't have two of him because one is already hard enough to keep up with," said his deployed supervisor here, Tech. Sgt. James Bauman, who is deployed from the Air Force Weather Agency at Offutt AFB, Neb. "It's great working with him, he's taught me quite a bit."

The sergeant competed amongst Airmen of the 305th Weather Flight at McGuire Air Force Base before his package was submitted to AMC, which competed against every forecaster in the command.

His package contained accomplishments such as his role in a "top-to-bottom scrub of procedures, equipment, reporting and everything else," he said. "We scored a 98.1 percent on that evaluation, which was higher than any other weather flight in the command's history."

Also, he came to the rescue when the McGuire weather computer server shut down.

"One day we had a lightning strike that hit right next door to the server and it knocked the power out," he said.

He went in on his day off in the pouring rain and reset and rebooted the server in less than an hour.

Another highlight of Sergeant Healy's performance is his accomplishment of the everyday mission.

"Each aircraft is vulnerable to specific weather hazards," he explained. "Weather sensitivities for a Predator are completely different than the sensitivities a KC-10 faces. It's our job to know those hazards for every airframe in the Air Force and be able to spot them on these weather maps in real-time throughout the day."

He accomplished that when he noticed some warning signs in the weather and was able to advise four flights on their existence. Since the flights had more than a two-hour lead time, they were able to re-route.

So although the sergeant, who sewed on his current rank in August, concentrates heavily on accomplishing the mission with no goal to win awards, he does admit that, "I like being a weatherman, so being an outstanding weatherman is even better."

Weatherman