The White Falcon - 26.02.1988, Blaðsíða 1

Vol. 31 No. 8 NATO Base, Keflavik, Iceland February 26, 1988
NOCF on top of Kef's weather
by J03 Andrew I. Karalis
The Naval Oceanography Com-
mand Facility, Keflavik (NOCF),
or more commonly referred to as
“the Weather Office", provides
weather and oceanographic sup-
port information to all Depart-
ment of Defense commands here
24 hours a day. One aspect of
NOCF's services you are probably
familiar with is Weathervision.
You have probably seen the
weather information on Channel 2
and wondered what all those
letters and numbers meant.
You may think you need a
degree in Meteorology to under-
stand the information put out on
Weathervision, but help is near.
The Weather office is currently
revising their “short course in
weather guessing pamphlet- and a
new one will be out sometime in
March.
Other areas of NOCF's daily
duties remain largely unfamiliar
to most people. Sure, the flight
crews may have contact with the
Weather Office when they get a
weather brief before a mission,
but how many other people here
realize what NOCF does?
There are 20 Aerographer's
Mates, one Yeoman, and two
officers who make up the Weather
Office. These 23 people work in
conjunction with the Icelandic
Meteorological Office on a daily
basis and provide data for local
and worldwide use. The data used
for local weather forecasts like-
wise comes from all over the
world.
"Most of the time the weather is
predictable, but our main prob-
lem here is the lack of data
please see 'NOCF* on page 6