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Renewal ensures wing, Volcanic Ash Advisory Center partnership endures

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Christopher Nies
  • 2d Weather Squadron

Although the 557th Weather Wing is primarily focused on applying environmental knowledge and outcomes to directly and deliberately impose cost on the adversary, it also has a lesser known role monitoring volcanoes and tracking mission-impacting ash plumes. 

These plumes also affect commercial flying operations and requires a close partnership with one of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers.

The 557th WW serves as the backup to the Washington VAAC via its own VAAC located within the 2d Weather Squadron. 

This backup capability ensures that the Department of Commerce continues to protect general and commercial aviation over the U.S by leveraging Department of Defense capabilities.

“The 2d WS has had a long-standing relationship with the Washington VAAC,” said Staff Sgt. Theresa Rutledge, 2d WS Meteorological Satellite NCOIC.  “Our relationship was further cemented at the end of 2020 with a renewal of the official agreement we hold between us.”

The most important part of the agreement appoints 2d WS as the primary source of back-up for the Washington VAAC if they are unable to provide their services.”

In recent weeks, 2d WS and the Washington VAAC, with the critical help of the 16th Weather Squadron and 2d Systems Operations Squadron, reestablished the communications connection between the 557th WW and the Washington VAAC which had been inoperative for the past several months. Critical communications with the Washington VAAC have been restored, the nation’s commerce will continue to be protected by leveraging the capabilities of the 557th WW. 

“We were experiencing an ongoing issue of 2d WS products not disseminating properly to the VAAC webpage during outages. With the help of 2d SYOS, NOAA and IT at the VAAC, we were able to restore capabilities to 100 percent within the week due to the cooperation we have between both civilian and military entities,” Rutledge said.

With a diverse mission of its own that extends from space weather to meteorological operations at the top-secret level, the 2d WS manages the DoDs only volcanic ash advisory center.  Operated by the 2d WS’s Weather Intelligence Flight, analysts are tasked with monitoring 1,500 active volcanoes around the globe 24/7 with a specific focus on eruptions that release volcanic ash and have direct impacts to DoD operations.

Analysts use open source intelligence, which includes social media and webcams as well as meteorological satellite imagery to identify possible eruptions. Once identified, they verify the presence of any volcanic ash. Once volcanic ash is detected, analysts issue a volcanic ash bulletin. These text bulletins include specific details about the ash eruption to include location of the volcano, detection source, trajectory, and where further information can be found.  The 2d WS also produces unique forecast animations to allow DoD units to see ash accumulation, concentration, height, and movement over a span of time. 

Ash cloud information is especially important to aircrew. Volcanic ash is a significant hazard to aircraft as most need to remain at least 50 nautical miles away from volcanic ash to prevent an incident. Ash can enter aircraft engines causing them to catch fire and/or completely fail.

“The 557th WW and 2d WS will continue to utilize its unique capabilities to identify, coordinate, and disseminate tailored information that not only serves DoD operations, but also the national interest domestically via its partnership with the Department of Commerce,” said Lt. Col. Daniel Santiago, 2d WS commander.