14th Weather Squadron

The 14th Weather Squadron (14th WS) is a Geographically Separate Unit (GSU) of the 2nd Weather Group. The squadron is located in the Veach-Baley Federal Complex in Asheville, North Carolina. Its mission is military applied climatology. The 14 WS collects, protects and exploits authoritative climate data to optimize military and intelligence operations and planning in order to maximize the combat effectiveness of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) personnel and weapons systems. It delivers environmental information worldwide to the United States Air Force (USAF), the Army, Unified Combatant Commands, the Intelligence Community, and the Department of Defense. The 14 WS also collaborates with the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) (formerly the National Climatic Data Center). The mission of the 14 WS is to collect, protect and exploit authoritative climate data to optimize military and intelligence operations and planning. Divided into three flights, the Data Operations Flight, the Climate Operations Flight, and the System Flight, the 14 WS consists of more than 60 active-duty officers, enlisted personnel and civilians. The majority of the personnel at the 14 WS are meteorologists, weather technicians, cyber operators, and computer programmers. The Origins of Military Applied Climatology Punched cards, which are pieces of stiff paper that contain digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions, were a technical marvel when they came into prominence in the United States. The cards, developed by Herman Hollerith for use in the 1890 U.S. Census, made the use of historical weather records a practical means for determining the probability of future weather events and patterns. The British used punched cards successfully in about 1920 to extract wind data from ships' logs and to produce wind roses for ocean regions. The Dutch Meteorological Institute borrowed some of the British cards in 1922 and began their own weather analyses. Norway, France, and Germany soon followed.