The Weatherman They Didn’t Expect to See in the Desert
My journey from TV duty in Korea to combat operations with the 101st Airborne showed me that weather intelligence is as much about people and decisions as it is about data
In 1989, I found myself in an unusual dual role on the Korean Peninsula.
By day, I served as the Assistant Chief of Weather Operations supporting the Eighth Army and the 17th Aviation Brigade, where I was responsible for forecasting and briefing weather to support the American defense of South Korea.
By night, I was something else entirely: the (appropriately stiff) television weatherman on the American Forces Korea Network (AFKN).
The TV gig wasn’t my “real” job — it was a (fun) additional duty.
But for thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen stationed across the peninsula, I was the face they saw delivering the daily forecast.
It was an unexpected platform, and while I enjoyed it, I never lost sight of where my primary responsibilities lay: helping keep aircraft flying safely and operations running smoothly in one of the most strategically vital regions of the world.
From Seoul to Fort Campbell
After four years in Korea, my next assignment brought me back to the States — to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault).
There, I became the Chief of Weather Operations, supporting not just the Screaming Eagles but also the 5th Special Forces Group (SFG) and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR).
It was a huge step up in responsibility — and a step closer to the pointy end of military operations.
We arrived at Ft Campbell in January, 1991. It was a ghost town.
A One-Way Ticket to War
I’d barely gotten my family settled when I was handed a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia. The 101st (as well as the 5th SFG and 160th SOAR) had already deployed to the desert in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, and I was sent forward to join them on the Iraqi border.
That put me directly in the thick of Operation Desert Storm — supporting the division through the lead-up and execution of the ground invasion of Iraq in 1991. It was a long way, literally and figuratively, from reading weather charts in a Seoul TV studio.
One of the more amusing moments came when a soldier from the division did a double take:
“Wait… weren’t you the guy on AFKN? The weatherman?”
Yes — but what they hadn’t realized was that television was just the side gig. The real work was, and always had been, operational weather intelligence: translating weather forecasts into decisions that could make or break missions.
Weather Intelligence in Action
Those back-to-back experiences — first in Korea, then in the Middle East — formed some of the early chapters in my journey toward building and applying weather intelligence.
It wasn’t just about predicting the weather. It was about understanding how weather impacts strategy, operations, and outcomes — from helicopter lift capacity in humid Korean summers, to sandstorms obscuring the desert battlefield, to timing the start of an air assault based on a fleeting weather window.
That’s where I began to learn, in a very real sense, that weather is always part of the mission. And it’s where I earned the weather intelligence bones I still rely on today.