Thank you for reopening the thread. My main questions are in regards to how SOWTs are utilized. I've read the official job description from airforce.com, SOWTs Facebook page and other sources but am interested in how often they're attached to other SOF units, and how much they go out on ops with the unit they're attached to.
There are some unilateral missions (i.e. the weather guy is in charge).
There are some ST missions (airfield seizure for example) where it is a group of controllers, PJ's and weather guys.
Most of the last 10 years you were attached to another service's team.
You will do minimal, if any, inside the wire stuff. Conventional weather gals and officers (for the most part) get that one.
There is an ebb and flow; SOWT is critical when a campaign starts because we need data, the weather aspect slows down once the conventional networks get set up.
SOWT gets critical at the end of a campaign when the conventional networks close down.
They do other non-weather and semi-weather related stuff (no I am not going to put it here) during that "in-between" phase.
The ability to do more than observe the weather is what makes the difference.
The book Deadly Blue talks about some of the SOWT missions during the early phase of OEF-A. weather channel also had a good over view a few years back (it may be on youtube).
