Her recommendation based on her reading of the meteorological data: Proceed.
Disaster was averted, she said.
“In that case, they did an evacuate an entire island of 150 people,” she recalled. “You see what happens with the storm. Would they be safe or not? We had to watch that unfold.”
Maj. William Graff, an AFIT instructor of atmospheric science , had his own moment, working for an air show in Missouri in 2015 when, poring over his data, he knew a storm was on its way.
It was time to get spectators inside hangars, he knew. And it was time to let his superiors know.
“It was well more than a thousand people getting into those hangars,” he recalled. “Those are real situations that our weather officers are faced with. And we have to prepare them for not just facing adversity, but doing so in a graceful manner and in a confident manner.”
Military weather forecasters who will do everything from decide whether the weekend base picnic will be wet or dry to help officers make life-and-death decisions are trained at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s AFIT.
At AFIT, students learn to give the Army, Air Force and Space Force the meteorological information leaders need to make smart decisions.
In August 2024, the program was moved to AFIT from the Naval Postgraduate School in California.
Weather forecasting is far more than mere convenience in the military, especially for those who fly.
“Accurate weather impacts everything from whether someone wants to go golfing today to the launch of missiles and satellites,” Pasillas said.
The program at AFIT started this past fall with nine students. It has 16 or 17 applicants seeking to get into 15 openings for the coming fall 2025 session.
The program is open only to Air Force officers. But as it grows — and it is expected to grow — it could open to civilian meteorologists who will work for the government.
“We want them to have a basic understanding of everything from the depths to the stars,” Graff said.
Innovation and hard work will be the watchwords here. Students will be expected to grapple with atmospheric dynamics, aspects of Newtonian physics, visually understanding the birth of weather fronts and a lot more.
Graff said students will encounter a lot of new material, built in a sense from scratch. He teaches about devices, and leads students into capstone projects in which they make their own sensors, complete with supply chains, instruction manuals and mock corporate logos.
He also leads students in simulations in which they “advise” the Wright Brothers on how to fly their plane for those historic flights in 1903, based in historic data.
And yes, one simulation has students advising Allied leaders on whether to launch the 1944 D-Day invasion, based again on historic conditions.
Their advice and their decisions will affect thousands of lives.
“Convince me you know what you’re talking about,” Graff said.
“Part of our job isn’t just protecting equipment, it’s protecting people,” he added.
The program has had something of a circuitous history. From 1952 to 1993, it graduated 20 to 30 students yearly from civilian schools.
In the mid-1990s there was a pause, with the program being reinstated in 1998 at Texas A&M, Florida State University, and the Ohio State University.
Changes came again in 2003 when it moved to the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterrey, Calif.
Now, AFIT is home.
The move to AFIT as a graduate certificate program offers additional benefits. Officers will start careers by receiving the designation of “bachelors +” on their records, indicating the completion of advanced studies in graduate school. Top performers will have a chance to compete to remain for three additional quarters using program credits to get a start on a master’s degree.
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