Reserve weather reconnaissance unit completes slow winter storm season

Published April 2, 2014
By Master Sgt. Brian Lamar
403rd Wing Public Affairs

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron had the fourth slowest winter-weather reconnaissance season on record, according to the April 1 unit activity report from the Chief Aerial Reconnaissance Coordination All Hurricanes, or CARCAH, unit at the National Hurricane Center.

The trend follows a record-low number of hurricane tracking flights by the 53rd WRS during the 2013 season.

Although the majority of the country was frozen over by the weather phenomenon known as the polar vortex, the 53rd wasn't requested to fly as much this winter season.

"The low number of flight taskings can partly be attributed to the fact that many of this year's storms moved west to east over land and did not start over water where reconnaissance flights could have benefited the forecasts," said John Pavone, the CARCAH at the National Hurricane Center who is dual-hatted with providing tasking requirements for winter-storm missions as well.

The official winter-storm season for the 53rd WRS begins in November and lasts through March. The Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico winter-storm missions are launched from Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.

To gather data from the Pacific storms, the 53rd can forward deploy to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii or JB Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. This year, the U.S. National Weather Service did not task the 53rd WRS to fly into the Pacific in an attempt to develop an analysis for cost-effectiveness.

"Other Atlantic systems were not tracked with aircraft because of high confidence in the forecast models," said Pavone.

The high confidence in the forecast models are attributed several factors.

"The models used by the National Weather Service are becoming more sophisticated and better at analyzing future conditions over North America," said Lt. Col. Jon Talbot, 53rd WRS chief meteorologist.

"Over the last two years we've changed the process of deciding if air reconnaissance is needed by adding an additional approval step before making the determination," said Mike Schichtel, the target observation focal point meteorologist at the National Weather Prediction Center. "This year in particular, the models performed better than they have in the past for forecasting".

"The forecast models performed very well this winter and since the majority of the winter weather events tracked across land and cold air masses were entrenched over the northern part of the country, there was less uncertainty over rain versus snow and less data was needed from us to help in the forecast ," said Talbot.

Even though the 53rd saw less action in regards to weather reconnaissance, they continued to keep active and comply with congress' mandate to continue to perform other missions in support of national defense requirements during the non-hurricane season like assisting with aeromedical evacuation training missions.