FORT RUCKER, Ala. (January 8, 2015) -- Weather not only impacts the training of Army Aviators, it is also a consideration for most things that happen on Fort Rucker, and one office here is the information hub for all things weather.
Fort Rucker Weather Operations, located on Cairns Army Airfield, is the place where Aviators stop by for weather updates before they fly, the place air traffic controllers call for weather updates during those flights, and the owners of the Twitter feed that pilots check for incoming weather after they land.
But it is also the originating place for weather reports used in planning post events ranging from change of command ceremonies to Freedom Fest, and it is the office that issues weather advisories that keep the Fort Rucker community safe.
"We do a little bit of everything here, but our main mission is Aviation weather," said Cindy Howell, lead meteorological technician, "We put out a product three times a day -- we forecast for 150 miles of airspace for our pilots to fly in. Three times a day we post a Mission Execution Forecast. It covers 60 nautical miles.
"Then we put out another product that covers 100 miles, and another that covers 150 miles," she said. "Three times a day all three of these products go out to our various customers."
Knowing the weather forecast is crucial to pilots, according to Howell. "They can't go to their helicopter and fly it without a weather briefing. Our goal is to maximize training time and maximize safety."
But briefing pilots about what weather they might be flying in is only one part of daily life in Weather Ops.
"Resource protection is a big thing we are involved with," she said. "We have almost 30 different watches, warnings and advisories that we issue for various criteria here. Anything from cold temperatures, icing, turbulence, severe thunderstorms, and tornadoes -- we do all that here.
We also monitor the Doppler radar and we are the secondary tornado siren here on post."
Howell said the Fort Rucker community has great resources available to them via the Weather Ops website, Facebook page and Twitter feed. They are all accessible through links from rucker.army.mil/6weather.
"All of our weather products are on our website," she said. "You can also find links to local radar and satellite, safety information, and a lot more useful information."
"Be informed and be prepared," said Howell. "You can turn on the Weather Channel or the news to find out the weather -- those are good sources -- but they are focused on their viewing area and Weather Ops is focused on Fort Rucker.
"They might tell you partly cloudy with a 30-percent chance of rain, but we have to be a little more precise than that," she said. "We have to tell you within 30 minutes what time will the rain start, how high will the clouds be. Depending on the customer, airframe and mission, we might have to tell you the difference between 400 and 500 feet on the cloud height. To our customers, 100 feet is the difference between a go and a no-go."
The weather is constantly changing, requiring updates to forecasts and the Weather Ops picture of what is happening.
"It is really a never-ending process," said Howell. "It is as much art as it is science. If you are not careful, you can suffer from data overload. There are so many data sources out there, and it is easy to become overwhelmed.
"To make our forecasts we look at local area surface observations, the over-all picture, the jet stream, satellite imagery, radar, and the upper levels of the atmosphere," said Howell. "Then we take all that along with model data, forecast data and alpha numeric guidance and we piece it all together into the best product we can. It is complicated, but it is so much fun. Patience and time-management skills are important here."
Weather Ops also does preplanning forecasts for special events like Freedom Fest, Lake Fest, the children's Easter egg hunt, Children's Festival, Oktoberfest, and "for any big event that takes place on post, we will do a forecast for a couple days out," she said.
There is no overstating the importance of accuracy in the products produced by Weather Ops according to Howell.
"Three days a week we put together a detailed seven-day forecast so Fort Rucker leadership can plan ahead," she said. "Sometimes they want to fly on Saturday, and it can get costly for the instructors, air traffic controllers, base ops, refuelers and everything else."
"If we say the weather is good to go, and they call people in on overtime and it is not good to go, we have just cost the customer a lot of money," said Howell. "With the times we are in, people don't have money to throw around like that.
"That is why there is constant communication with the various towers and the pilots that give us reports," she said. "Our picture of the weather is constantly being updated and we push that information back out to our customers.
"But the pilots tell me that they would rather be on the ground wishing they were flying, than up in severe weather wishing they were on the ground," said Howell.
Related Links:
USAACE and Fort Rucker on Twitter
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