COLUMBUS AIR FORCE, Miss. -- Severe rainstorms, hail or tornadoes, the 14th Operations Support Squadron’s Weather Flight has seen it all on their radars, here.
With the help of the weather flight, the pilot training mission presses on to help produce every pilot on Columbus Air Force Base.
“The primary goal is exploiting the weather and being as detailed as possible,” said Staff Sgt. Ramon Curtis, 14th Operations Support Squadron noncommissioned officer in charge of Mission Services. “We touch every squadrons’ operations and help with everything on base, from the Base Exchange to the flying operations within 300 nautical miles.”
With Mississippi humidity comes the rain and odd weather patterns that can appear and slow flying down for the new students, because they need constant visual of the ground. With the right forecasting and recognition of patterns the weather flight can properly brief the squadrons on their ability to fly hours or days ahead.
“The weather here has shown me everything, we get all kinds of weather here,” Curtis said. “The most challenging thing though is forecasting around this area and the ‘Columbus Bubble’, where stuff comes in from the west and we see it, we forecast for it, but then it splits over us and ends up in Alabama.”
Columbus AFB has a single mission; produce pilots, advance Airmen, and feed the fight. The weather flight exemplifies that mission.
“We are helping student pilots get the jobs they wanted, it’s pretty cool,” said Senior Airman Tavone Travers, 14th OSS weather forecaster.
No two days of weather are the same, and no two seasons have the excact same patterns eathier. The dynamic changes create constant challenges for weather flight to overcome.
“It is super unique here, but forecasting is forecasting,” Curtis said. “Weather is all about experience, and that’s what we try and teach these new airmen here. The part I like about this job is we are always in the know. We get a lot of great opportunities being the top deploying career field, having the ability to attach with U.S. Army units and things like that. I stay in because of the opportunities the job offers.”
Weather experts will be necessary for the foreseeable future and provide airmen with a different perspective of the various missions across the Air Force. Those Airmen will continue aiding pilots and commanders with critical weather analysis to get any task in front of them accomplished safely and effectively.