Photo By Senior Airman Zachary Nordheim | U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Taylor Speak, 325th Operations Support Squadron...... read more read more
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To get an aircraft airborne, a checklist of conditions must be met for pilot and aircraft safety—one of those being current and future weather conditions. Rain or shine, the 325th Operations Support Squadron weather flight is responsible for providing accurate, real-time data to base commanders to ensure and maintain mission readiness.
With a total-force team of 20, their primary focus is to protect people and assets through weather watches, warnings and advisories.
“We use several tools for tracking the weather, the most important of which are observations, lightning trackers, meteorological satellites and radar,” said Staff Sgt. Andrew Pember, 325th OSS weather craftsman. “What’s important is that these tools provide real-time data so we can know what is happening actively at that station. This is how we can determine how fast a storm is moving and how intense a storm is, which is all super helpful for forecasting and tracking weather.”
The Weather flight issues warnings when hazardous weather development is occurring, imminent or likely. These Airmen will also issue watches when the risk of a hazardous weather is possible, but its occurrence, location or timing is still uncertain. In both situations, individuals should have safety plans in place for the chance of hazardous weather.
“Let’s take a waterspout as an example, if we see rotation on radar and track that it will come within 10 nautical miles of Tyndall, we can then draft a watch or warning notification,” said Capt. Daniel Smith, 325th OSS weather flight commander. “This information goes to command post who then pushes it out to agencies on base.”
The team also provides critical information in support of base command teams when more severe natural disasters approach, like hurricanes. According to Pember, hurricane condition levels are driven by the weather team’s expert analysis and are vital for ensuring the safety of personnel, aircraft and other assets on the installation.
While similar in name, hurricane categories and hurricane conditions are different systems that indicate the state of emergency for a hurricane. The hurricane category is an official scale that identifies the strength of the storm, potential winds, storm surge and damage. A hurricane condition, also known as HURCON, is an alert scale used by the United States Armed Forces to indicate the proximity of approaching hurricane and destructive winds.
By using a variety of weather models to analyze precipitation, pressure, humidity and temperature, weather flight Airmen can extrapolate data from the most accurate models for current and future forecasts. These critical elements have a direct impact on Tyndall’s flying mission, aircraft maintenance, construction and other daily operations.
“Not all jobs can see how they fit into the mission. However, with the weather flight, it’s very easy to see the direct impact our forecasts have on base operations,” said Smith. “If we issue a lightning warning within five nautical miles, we know maintainers will seek shelter and aircraft can’t fly. It gives us great satisfaction knowing that we provide a service that helps safeguard people and assets.”
| Date Taken: | 10.09.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.09.2024 09:11 |
| Story ID: | 482810 |
| Location: | TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 25 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 325th OSS weather flight protects Team Tyndall during hurricane season, by SrA Zachary Nordheim, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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