Robert W. Endlich
MY FIRST CLIMATE FORECAST
My forecasting career as a Weather Officer in the Air Force and as a civilian Meteorologist for the Army mostly consisted of operational forecasts, usually up to 24-hour forecasts. However, once before, in the months, and later the weeks, prior to the 1980 NATO REFORGER Field Training Exercise, CERTAIN RAMPART, I ventured into forecasting a season ahead. As that exercise was in the planning stages, in Cold War Germany, we in the US VII
Corps were to conduct a field maneuver with troops in the field, putting into practice REFORGER’s name, “REturn of FORces to GERmany,” the promise the US had made to Germany and NATO in the 1970s.
My duty station was in the southern suburbs of Stuttgart, Germany, and my assignment was Staff Weather Officer to VII (US) Corps, at the time, the largest corps in the US Army. In southern Germany, in the winter and spring of 1980, we had experienced the coldest and wettest cold season in the previous 100 years. The ground for our REFORGER 1980 maneuver area was in Bavaria, some 75 miles east of Stuttgart, on both sides of the Danube River. At that point the soil was wet and impossible to use for ground maneuver of the heavy vehicles used by the Army, mostly M-60 tanks and M-113 armored personnel carriers. Spring planting was delayed. As VII Continue reading “El Nino to End Persistent Drought?”
