News

Team Dover 'weathers' mother nature

  • Published
  • By : Airman 1st Class William Johnson
  • 436th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  From loading and delivering cargo to security forces scanning identification cards, many aspects of the Dover mission would be more difficult without accurate information from a single flight.

The 436th Operations Support Squadron's Weather Flight is tasked with collecting weather data and building weather forecasts that are used to brief the 436th Airlift Wing commander and pilots so that missions can be planned and executed.

Master Sgt. Derrell Lankford, 436th OSS weather operations flight chief, said the weather data collected by his flight is also used by various squadrons and Guard and Reserve counterparts to complete their missions.

"We provide hourly updates and put out the warnings and advisories in the event of adverse weather conditions that range from high winds to tornadoes and hurricanes," said Lankford. "These updates and advisories are in turn used by pilots and squadrons to perform their jobs safely and effectively."

The Weather Flight relies on eight Airmen, of which two are always deployed, to collect weather data and issue out a terminal aerodrome forecast, or TAF. A TAF is a format of reporting weather forecast information and generally covers a 24 to 36 hour period.

With winter rapidly approaching, the 436th OSS Weather Flight is already conducting the necessary preparations to make sure Team Dover will have reliable and accurate winter weather forecasts.

"We do training with every seasonal change," said Lankford. "With the winter season it's not just the snow you have to worry about, but also the freezing precipitation. So we train on all the different kinds of weather fronts that cause that and see how it impacts our operations here."

The 436th OSS Weather Flight also provides a climatology report to the 436th Civil Engineer Squadron that is used in an annual snow brief. The climatology report includes an average of perception and snowfall over the past six years and provides a pattern in weather data that can be used to predict the snowfall for the upcoming winter.

The weather data is collected through the FMQ-19 Meteorological Observation System, a three tower weather data collection system that is spread out on the two runways.

The FMQ-19 MOS contains visibility/ambient light sensors, freezing rain sensors, precipitation identifications sensors, lightning detectors, ceilometer, relative humidity and ambient temperature sensors, precipitation gauge, wind monitor and a barometer. The data is collected and displayed in real-time on the Joint Environmental Tool, which acts of the central hub for weather data.

The system is the main tool the 436th Weather Flight uses to predict weather accurately.

"We can accurately predict rain fall within a quarter to a half-inch," said Tech. Sgt. Scott Capodice, 436th OSS NCO in charge of weather. "The snow is a little harder to predict because temperature variations and high winds that can create snow drifts make it harder to measure, but usually we are within 1-2 inches of our predictions."

The 436th OSS Weather Flight will be giving their annual snow brief to Dover AFB leadership on Nov. 6, 2014, where they will review past winter averages and predict this year's snow event timeline.

"Based on the climatology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting an average winter this year," said Lankford. "So for us, that means we should see about 17-25 inches of snowfall. The challenging thing for us is to predict how many big snow events we will have to account for this snow fall."