Air Force Weather Reengineering

With the advent of Air Force Weather Reengineering, weather technicians are physically relocating to the operational flying units they support. At many stations this leaves only one person available at the base weather station counter to take weather observations and perform all meteorological support for the base or post. An on-site forecaster is not likely to be available in the traditional sense to provide transient flight weather briefing support.

Fear not, however, weather support is available. In the Continental U.S. there are four Operational Weather Squadrons (OWSs) who are staffed and organized to provide 24-hour transient aircrew support. The figure below shows the geographic responsibility of each respective OWS and lists the appropriate contact information. Overseas OWSs are located at Sembach AB, Germany, Yokota AB, Japan, Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, and Hickam AFB, Hawaii. The local weather flight or OWS can help you contact the appropriate overseas OWS for your destination. In addition, OWS contact information can be located in the Flight Information Handbook and FLIP.

OWSs usually need two hours notification to schedule and prepare a weather briefing, but if an aircrew has an emergency or a high priority request the OWS can process the briefing ahead of others. Requests should be submitted as soon as possible to speed services for everyone. Ideally, file your request the evening prior to the next morning’s take off and your briefing will be ready when you start your day. Some OWSs are already logging nearly 3,000 weather briefs per month, with most requests filled during peak flying hours.

Each Air Force base or Army post has a transient aircrew work area located near the weather station, usually in the base operations area or flight planning room. Each work area has a computer terminal capable of electronically filing a flight weather briefing request with the appropriate OWS. The latest in web technology, Program Generation Scheduler/Server (PGS/S), facilitates the transaction. The information is transmitted directly to the briefing cell at the OWS. The completed briefing is returned either via the computer, or a designated fax machine.

You can still hear a human voice, however, and always should. OWS forecasters can answer any questions you have, clarify information, elaborate on expected weather conditions, and provide the official "brief time" and "initials" for the DD 175-1.

While waiting on your briefing request to process, you should access other products posted on the OWS web page. You’ll find the current radar composites, satellite imagery, severe weather information, flight hazard graphics, etc. One unique feature all OWS web sites have is the ability to link to other OWSs directly. If your flight will be crossing OWS boundaries, you can access the region-specific products with just a few simple clicks of the mouse.