The Effects of Weather on Flight Ops
With todays technology, one would think that weather related delays or cancellations wouldn't occur so last minute especially when it comes to military operations. Recently a squall of thunderstorms moved through our area, which lasted a few days. Well one morning in particular around 0730 our station was getting hammered with wind and rain, to the point visibility was probably less than a mile. We hadn't been pre-briefed on any sort of weather issues during the morning meeting (Other than knowing from the news and seeing it was pretty ugly outside), so we assumed that either the weather would pass, or that us and the other squadrons on base were still clear to fly. So that morning we operated with the assumption they were going to fly for the day, we went outside in the cold and rain did our daily and pre-flight maintenance checks, aircraft arm/safe checks, and made sure everything was good for the planned flights. Probably not more than 5 minutes after getting back...