Overcoming the storm

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Daniel Lile
  • 14th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  There are many variables that make flying or any other kind of mission a success or a failure. Particularly with flying the weather is a huge aspect, if a pilot doesn't know what he is flying into the consequences could be severe.

"We are a training base here; we are the first stop for people getting their pilot wings," said Staff Sgt. Cody Howk, 14th Operations Support Squadron. "Weather is a huge aspect for every kind of an operation; especially here, pilots have to know what they are flying into. Our mission weather packet is an hour-to-hour product that tells pilots everything they could possibly need to know."

The flying mission is a huge part of the weather operation but the 14th OSS also supports all the different squadrons as well, said Howk.

"We provide weather support to all the flyers and the different squadrons on base," said 1st Lt. Kris Lieber, 14th Operations Support Squadron. "We also give in-flight weather support to all the pilots on all of the different flying routes. We have a pretty large area of responsibility, a lot bigger than just Columbus itself."

Weather operation is not just trying to predict whether it's going to rain or be sunny on a particular day, it's a complicated science. Predicting many weather variables over a large area is difficult to say the least.

"We have a seven state area that we forecast including wind speed, icing, turbulence and every other variable that our pilots could need," said Tech. Sgt. Chris Tanner, 14th Operations Support Squadron.

Weather is constantly and drastically changing all the time. Trying to keep up to date with changes can be challenging.

"Working with Mother Nature, you're always going to get thrown a curve ball," said Lieber. "The hardest part of our job is dealing with the changes and making sure everyone knows what is going on."

One of the major issues the weather team focuses on is possible icing on our planes. Icing is difficult to predict and even harder to prevent.

"Icing is where a plane flies through moisture in clouds and then it freezes onto the plane itself; it is definitely the biggest risk to our planes here," said Howk. "Icing can freeze up the engine, damage the wing and damage the frame itself."

The weather team is vital to our mission here at Columbus AFB. Pilots in training need more unique weather readouts than most bases, and our weather team does a great shop of tailoring their work to our mission.

"Especially for a training base, all the pilots, depending on their phase of training, have different sensitivities and we have to tailor our reports to that," said Tanner. "Certain pilots can only go through certain ceilings or certain conditions and we have to know what those are."