Weather: More than just a forecast

Published Sept. 29, 2008
By Staff Sgt. Vincent Borden
386th Air Expeditionary Wing

SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Senior Airman Eryn Morales has gotten quite comfortable making predictions.

Perhaps that has to do with her success rate. Five years ago, Airman Morales was sitting in a class at Tivy High School in Kerrville, Texas when she forecasted the direction her life was taking. The class, one that covered meteorology and oceanography, stimulated her interest in a subject most people take for granted, even though it affects them every day.

Coupled with her desire to join the armed forces, that forecast led her here to the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing, where observing and forecasting the weather patterns of the Persian Gulf region affects the wing's Airmen and its mission in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.

The mission, as a result of the base's weather Airmen, rarely sees delays in its operations. Airmen in charge of flight operations are able to circumvent any possible hang-ups due to the forecasts they receive.

The job isn't easy. With all the flack weather men and women catch for being off with their predictions or just flat out wrong, the unpredictability of weather makes their declarations part hypothetical, part prophetical and mostly a guessing game.

Which makes being right all the more incredible.

"When pilots come back and say 'Hey, you were right,' it's definitely a big motivator in doing my job," said Airman Morales, a weather forecaster with the 386th Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron. She is deployed from Aviano Air Base, Italy. "It's a little tough to get into, but now that I have the hang of it, I enjoy it tremendously."

The inexactness of the science is its main draw, especially among weather Airmen here. Master Sgt. Scott Hauser, 386th EOSS Weather noncommissioned officer in charge, describes it as a "gray area science" that drew him in because of its fluidity and lack of hard set rules.

But that same inexactness, coupled with a mainstream lack of weather knowledge in general, is also the cause of its main criticisms.

"We're not here to tell you to wear a coat or bring an umbrella," said Sergeant Hauser, with a smile that says it is something he hears often. "There's a little bit more to the job than that. There are a lot of things that occur in weather, a lot of interaction between multiple influences, and we have to determine from those things what's going to occur.

"What we're most known for is being aviation forecasters and involved in the flying portion of the mission. But there's a much bigger portion of weather. There is resource protection and maintenance activities on the flightline, for example, that are affected by weather."

The Weather flight's mission here involves more than just Air Force assets and people. The Air Force provides support to all U.S. Army weather operations; the service does not have weather forecasters. That doesn't change, whether the unit is located in the U.S. or U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility.

That inter-service support involves an analysis of Doppler radar projected on televisions and computer screens painted in a collage of colors, from purples and dark reds and grays decorated over mapped land masses and bodies of water.

Information such as cloud ceiling height, which determines the air temperature of different systems, and the movement of dust need to be examined to determine how they will affect conditions in the air and on the ground.

All the information is analyzed and put into reports that are fed through many different channels, such as the Automatic Terminal Information Service, a continuous broadcast of airfield information pilots can tap into while in flight, and briefings for aircrew before mission departure.

Visibility, temperature and current weather conditions are covered in the reports. Although the flight is busy with calls from people looking for updated information or pilots stopping by to look at the current projected forecast, things become even more intense when word spreads that bad weather is approaching the base.

"Ramping up to bad weather, the phones just start ringing off the hook," said Sergeant Hauser. He explained that everyone is trying to get their plans in order, adjust their missions and change their plans in anticipation of whatever is coming, and there are a lot of questions that come into the Weather section from people trying to figure it all out.

"Once the bad weather hits, the phones stop ringing, all the warnings are out and everyone knows what is going on," said Sergeant Hauser. He's been involved in weather 11 of his 15 years in the military. "Then it calms down. What we find is that a lot of people don't even think about the weather until it's too late."

Television has a lot to do with that. Weather forecasts have become a staple of the news for both network morning shows and evening news broadcasts; there are even entire cable channels devoted to the topic.

Although they share the same subject, the level of specificity between the two differs wildly.

Airman Morales explained that those broadcasts have attempted to make weather more accessible to the masses, leaving out a lot of information real weather analysts have to sift through every day to make an accurate prediction.

"A lot of the information out there from television shows is very basic," Airman Morales said. "They'll tell you 'partly cloudy,' but what does that mean? We have to describe what kind of cloud cover is out there, and whether it's scattered or broken, for example. We also have to know how many clouds there are and layers."

That detail is what gives commanders and pilots the information they need to make adjustments from everything to mission departures and arrivals to outdoor ceremonies and events.

"What we do here is not what most people are used to seeing on TV," Sergeant Hauser said. He is deployed from the 14th Weather Squadron in Asheville, N.C.

"A lot of people don't really look at weather as an intelligence or planning tool, but we are. We're integrated into all aspects of the mission," said Sergeant Hauser.