FORT NOVOSEL, Ala. — The U.S. Air Force’s 18th Combat Weather Squadron, Operation Location-Charlie, plays a critical role in whether the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence’s flight training mission at Fort Novosel is cleared for takeoff — or not.
“We’re tailoring everything we do to the flight school students, to the flight training mission, in great part,” said Cindy L. Howell, supervisory meteorological technician at Cairns Army Airfield, who formerly served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force.
“It’s not enough to say, ‘70 percent chance of rain’. We have to tell you where the clouds are, how high, how much clouds, what time will the rain start, how will the visibility be, what will the ceiling be, within the thunderstorm,” Howell said.
Their team's coverage includes one major airfield, four heliports, and a gunnery range, and looks out to a 250-mile radius and up to 18,000 feet, which comprises the training area for the Army and Air Force rotary-wing training at Fort Novosel, and contracted Army fixed-wing training conducted at Dothan.
“That’s our local flying area, so we’re not just looking at one particular point, we’re looking at lots of little points or a chunk within that airspace. We are thinking about all the mission-limiting criteria for our customers, what would make their mission a no-go in this area versus that area,” Howell said.
Typically the local area weather offers a “little bit of everything,” including fog and low clouds in the morning particularly in fall and winter and the potential for icing in January and February, and two severe weather seasons in spring and summer, she explained.
With the Atlantic hurricane season running from June 1 through Nov. 30, the team actively monitors the Atlantic Basin and the Gulf of Mexico.
They typically can monitor tropical storms from seven to 10 days out, with long-range models that look further out than that. Preparedness is key, and Howell wants to ensure that if people find themselves staring at a probable track for a major storm this season, they understand the threat.
“The cone just represents the track where two thirds of the storm historically have tracked. That means one third will be outside that cone. We don’t want people to look at the cone and say ‘outside the cone is all clear’. That is certainly not the case,” she said.
With thousands of people and hundreds of aircraft at Fort Novosel to help safeguard, there’s a lot riding on their vigilance and expertise.
“You’ve got to get it right,” said Howell.
A radar located within 20 miles of the installation is especially helpful in the event of tropical storms. The local area also has the added bonus of radar coverage out of Maxwell Air Force Base, Eglin Air Force Base, and Tallahassee.
Howell said their team relies primarily on Air Force weather sources and supplement that with commercial and government sources, but it goes beyond pulling up imagery online and running through the charts. The job requires a human being who can expertly navigate the data presented.
“You’ve got to have the skills, you’ve got to know what’s happening now. You’ve got to know how the atmosphere works,” she said.
The team’s daily grind includes generating multiple products for different customers and phases of training.
They update the DD 175-1 Mission Execution Forecast and Flight Weather Briefing package three times per day to cover three launch periods for flight school, beginning with morning rush at 5 a.m.
The document includes a detailed breakdown of winds and temperatures by flight level, hazards, and area forecasts. Students pick up a copy, stop in for a glance at the radar and a weather briefing, and notate the “void” time for the forecast, which is required to be legal to fly. After they head out to the aircraft for training, they may call back for updates or access those on social media.
“On a weather day, we try to be more interactive: we really want the customer to talk to a forecaster and make sure they understand what they’re dealing with. When we brief flight school academics, we encourage them to come in, ask questions. We’ll show the radar and satellite and observations, and we’ll go over this briefing with them and highlight any areas of concern,” she said.
“If they want to practice reading the METAR weather report, we’ll help them with that,” she added.
Howell, who has been keeping a careful eye on conditions impacting the Fort Novosel flight training area for 20 years, said the job can be stressful, but she enjoys working in a specialty she has been passionate about since childhood, and being part of something greater than self.
“It’s very satisfying and it’s fun. When you’ve been here forever you get to know people, it just feels like a big family when our customers come through,” she said.
“It’s nice when you know that the mission got done because you got the forecast right. Or you know that we safeguarded hundreds of aircraft and got everybody home to their families to ride out the storm because you had a good forecast and you got information out to leadership in plenty of time,” Howell said.
Howell said her approach to communicating about potential severe weather is not to oversell.
“My philosophy is we’re not going to overhype. When it’s time to jump on the ceiling, we will,” she said. “You don’t want to be the boy who cries wolf. If every storm is ‘the worst one ever’, then after a while nobody’s going to believe you and then the big one will come through and nobody’s prepared. By the same token, we don’t want to underplay everything because then you’re caught unaware. It really is a delicate balance.”
Howell commended her all-civilian team that works day and night to track conditions impacting the cantonment, produce products, issue weather watches, warnings, and advisories, conduct routine classroom briefings and coach the students on understanding forecast conditions as they come through their office daily, and enable frequent communication with USAACE leaders and staff and customers they support.
“We’ve got a small but close-knit team that has 69 years of collective experience at Fort Novosel weather station, not to mention 113 years of prior military — Air Force and Navy — weather experience,” Howell said. “We know weather, we know each other, we know Fort Novosel, and we know this mission.”
What also makes them unique is focusing their forecast where their heart is — the Aviation students and instructors.
At a training base, “we are not going off to war, that is not our mission, but we are teaching weather to every flight school student that comes through this installation and they will take that knowledge with them wherever they go, so it’s pretty powerful when you think of it in those terms,” Howell said.
“It’s awesome to know, we had a severe storm today, we gave them ample warning, everybody is safe, all the aircraft landed, and we’ll live to fly another day.”
Howell said she plans to grow the team, with job postings expected on USA Jobs in the near future. Prior Air Force weather experience is a plus due to the diversity of the mission.
Ty L. Powell, deputy command aviation officer and chief of USAACE G-3 Aviation, commended the team’s unwavering commitment to precision.
“The weather detachment's forecasts enable pilots to navigate the ever-changing atmospheric conditions with confidence and safety,” Powell said.
“The scope of their responsibility is nothing short of impressive,” he said. “In an arena where details can make all the difference, the weather detachment's diligent work underscores their vital role in shaping the next generation of skilled Army aviators.”
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