CAMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo -- Every time lightning strikes, residents of Camp Bondsteel hear their voices over the loudspeakers, but what do the Camp Bondsteel weather team members do with the rest of their day?
A whole lot.
The 401st Air Expeditionary Group, 2nd detachment weather team’s mission is to provide support and resource protection to aviation assets and the battle group at large.
For those aviation assets on Camp Bondsteel to function properly, the weather team has to provide pilots, air crew and ground crew with a single accurate and easy-to-use resource.
“We have info coming in from multiple satellites, radar and base stations,” said Air Force Capt. Desmond Millner, commander of the weather team.
“It’s my job to make sure we produce a weather product that is really valuable to the customers,” he continued.
To meet that goal, the three weather technicians reduce all the incoming data to a single daily weather sheet with a red/yellow/green system for flight risk assessment.
“We’re a one-stop shop for pilots,” said Tech. Sgt. Steven Maiers.
“It’s not easy, though,” he continued. “I’ve never been on a base with such sparse data. We’re at a meeting point of different weather systems. The normal rules don’t totally apply here. It’s a challenge every day to get the most out of the least.”
The 401st has had to contend with old equiment and lightning strikes throughout their deployment. The radar tower they refurbished themselves was recently rendered inoperable by lightning, and many other instruments need daily tuning.
“You see that value?” asked Tech. Sgt. Jeremy McMaster, weather technician and non-commissioned officer in charge. “It says we received over 6,000 inches of snow since yesterday. It takes a human to realize that this data is corrupt. You need people to make all these readings into something intelligible.”
Often the issue is not with data insufficiency, but with too much information.
“On the flip side of the coin,” said Maiers, “you can get lost in a sea of numbers. Weather science has a bit of an art to it. Deciding which interactions matter on a given day is not only difficult, it’s the most complex, difficult problem that computers can analyze. That’s where we come in, to make the final call.”
“We’re the only weather resource in this region of Kosovo, so we have to produce,” said Millner.
They produce, said Millner, because they love what they do. He sets the level of devotion of the group, having volunteered for a weather station assignment on St. George Island following this deployment. St. George is located in the middle of the Bering sea, hundreds of miles off the coast of Alaska.
Tech. Sgt. Adam Wabrowetz, weather technician, matches his work ethic, having spent his deployment working on courses to enable him to become a F-16 fighter pilot.
The airmen said they appreciate working with the soldiers and civilians on Camp Bondsteel.
“I’ve done weather reporting in Iraq for class three aircraft like the A-10 [Warthog],” said Maiers. “In other deployments, I’ve literally had pilots holding separate conversations while I give a mission weather briefing. It’s great working here. You can tell that the Blackhawk pilots respect and value what you do; the weather matters to them and their mission.”
Like many speciality sections in the battle group, the 401st weighs in at only four members, so to keep the helicopters flying they have had to refine the techniques of past rotations.
“The four of us have been able to improve the process here, hands down,” said Wabrowetz. “The guys before us did the same thing, I’m sure.”
They hold the distinction of being the last Air National Guard unit slotted for that mission here in Kosovo, with subsequent support planned to come from active duty Air Force units.