Weather team provides reports for mission

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Jack Sanders
  • 3rd Wing Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (AFNS) --  Arctic Warriors are defined by the cold temperatures in which they operate, but to deal with Alaska's harsh climate Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson officials rely on the Airmen of the weather flight to keep them informed.

The 3rd Operations Support Squadron weather flight supports a mixture of Army, Air Force and reserve airframes, which include, but aren't limited to the F-22 Raptors, C-17 Globemaster III, C-12 Huron, E-3 Sentry, UC-35A, C-130 Hercules, HH-60 Pave Hawk, and C-23 Sherpa.

They also forecast specifically for five different airfields: JB Elmendorf, Bryant, Juno, Bethel and Nome.

"A weather flight member's job is to provide the most accurate forecasts for the base, its residents and the "decision makers," said Staff Sgt. Raymond Polasky, of the 3rd OSS weather flight. "The more accurate the forecast, the better they can do their mission planning; the better they can do their mission."

The weather flight has a direct effect on JB Elmendorf, he said. Almost all operations on the installation rely on the accuracy of their forecasts.

"Our advisories go out to all the commanders and they're going to have to make the decisions whether to increase road conditions, or issue a delayed reporting," Sergeant Polasky said. "Our decisions have to be as accurate as possible in order to make other peoples' lives and missions better."

"We have to know our job," he said. "Besides reading lots and lots of computer model data, we actually have to know physics of the atmosphere ...it's part of our (technical training)."

The members of the weather flight must not only use their experience and knowledge, but forecaster tools and forecaster data in order to do the mission.

Some of the tools of the trade for weather Airmen include, weather sensors, which are located on both ends of the flightline, satellites and radar.

"We've got not only radar for here, we've got radar for Bethel, we can use other radars in Alaska as well," Sergeant Polasky said. "It's not as many as in the states, but it's enough that we can accurately predict."

The weather flight is preparing for the upcoming addition of the Kulis 176th, Alaska Air National Guard airframe movement.

"When I first got here, we did one or two products a day, now we're doing almost nine," said Senior Airman Joshua Harvey, of the 3rd OSS.

The weather flight is confident of their performances, even with the new additions.

"Sometimes we are wrong," Sergeant Polasky said. "But, most of the time we're pretty accurate."