I served two tours of duty in the USAF as a weather forecaster.  The first assignment was at Naha AB, Okinawa.  The second was at Tuy Hoa AB, RVN.  Prior to those assignments I spent a year at Texas A&M University studying Meteorology as a USAF 2nd Lieutenant.   I made my last official forecast in August of 1968 before I was assigned to Det 7, Hq AWS at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City, OK.  This assignment was my transition from a forecaster to computer programmer.   I arrived with a BA in Mathematics and a certification in Meteorology, but I couldn't have recognized a computer if I was sitting on one.  That's not exactly true - computers back then (2nd & 3rd generations) produced so much heat there is no way you could sit on them.  Within six months we moved the operation from Tinker to Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth, TX.  About that time all of the senior programmers retired, and I became the lead Weather Service programmer for the central site of the Automated Weather Network, and my future was for better or worse directed to computers and not weather forecasting.  I'm not sure that was a good thing for the computer industry, but it is certain that weather forecasting is a much more accurate art than it was when I was a practitioner.  How much that improvement is due to my leaving the practice is only conjecture.

Because of or in spite of this experience I have retained an interest in meteorology and continue perform as the resident meteorologist for myself and my sailing friends. In this section of the web I will publish my observations and analysis of things Meteorological.  Follow the links in the menu on the left for the subjects published to date.