Career In Meteorology

What is the Weather (Meteorology) job like in the Air Force (or any other military branch)?

I am leaning towards crosstraining out of my Air Force job and into the Weather Apprentice job. The long tech school doesnt bother me at all...I like school. What is this job like? What do you like or dislike about this job? What should I know about the job? PLEASE NO WEBSITES...I want info from people...I have already checked all the web sites on weather.

Public Comments

1. Why don't you go and ask someone in the Air Force who is already in that field. Thats the best way to find out dorkzon.
2. I was a Weather Forecaster in the Navy for 22 years. All my Tech Schools were with Air Force and Marine Corps classmates (Weather Observer, Weather Forecasting, Radiosonde Operator, Tropical Meteorology, Satellite Analysis) on Air Force bases. The average class was 20 Air Force, 5 Navy and 1 or 2 Marines. Depending on where you're stationed, the job can come with an enormous amount of pressure. You'll need excellent communications skills and you'll need good military bearing. The one thing you really have to deal with is this, it's shift work. Weather never sleeps. You'll work rotating shifts, usually 12 hours long, 2 nights on, 48 hours off, 2 days on 36 hours off. That's 365 days a year. No drinking of alcohol within 8 hours of coming on shift. We got $20,000 reenlistment bonuses in the Navy and that tended to attract a LOT of people who wanted to cross-train into weather. Once they spent a few weeks following us around almost all of them changed their minds. You REALLY need a sound foundation in mathematics in order to understand the physical processes that are going on. You need the ability to work in 3 dimensions relating what's happening in the upper and mid levels of the atmosphere to what's happening at the surface. We had hundreds of homemade flashcards with "thumb-rules" we had to memorize. The schools are, or at least were, all 7 level.