Max (Celsius)	Min (Celsius)	Rainfall (mm)
AIRHEAD	28.4	20.5	1.5
TRAVELLERS	29.0	19.5	5.8
RESIDENCY (6th)	24.7	17.7	14.3
GEORGETOWN	29.4	20.4	NIL
ST. HELENA	22.5	11.9	6.0
FALKLANDS	14.6	-1.2	32.1
UK (Brize Norton)	16.6	-0.5	37.2

Mobile Met Unit (MMU)

This week across the world, British Forces will stop and remember those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country, and like most of the civilian population, the country’s weather forecasters will do the same. For many of us though, this holds a special significance as the weather forecasters of the Met Office have been following the armed forces into conflict for over 70 years. Everyone knows the story of Group Captain James Stagg’s D-day forecast, but did you know that by the end of World War II, the Met Office had approximately 6300 staff in uniform as commissioned or enlisted members of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (Meteorological Branch) serving alongside the regular forces? Met Office staff continued to deploy and exercise with the armed forces through the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, with various changes to the name of the unit, but with little funding and equipment falling into a state of despair, disbandment of the then called Mobile Met Unit was suggested. Then Argentina invaded the Falklands. An MMU team deployed to Ascension Island in the early hours of Good Friday morning 1982 and so began an operational deployment on Ascension and at RAF Stanley which lasted almost four years until the new RAF Mount Pleasant airfield opened in Easter 1986. Some members of the Unit carried out eight or nine tours of duty in the South Atlantic and the cumulative time away from home for many individuals was almost 50% of those four years. For the first time in the Unit's history a number of campaign medals were awarded and the Unit's name is inscribed on the War Memorial erected on Stanley seafront. The Met Office still retains a presence at both MPA and Wideawake airfield in support of the British Forces South Atlantic. The MMU was again nearly forgotten when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, there isn’t any weather in the desert is there? Famously two members of the fated “Bravo Two Zero” patrol died of hyperthermia, proving that the desert did indeed have “weather” and teams were dispatched to various locations in the Middle East. Deployments to the Balkans soon followed, with the MMU being stretched to almost breaking point, with detachments to Incirlik and Ali al Salem in the Middle East theatre and at Split, Kiseljak, Tuzla, Sarajevo, Gioia del Colle, Prelip, Skopje, San Vito and Pristina in the former Yugoslavia (including Kosovo) theatres all being manned simultaneously.   MMU played a full part in Op Telic, operating from various locations and finally pulling out of Basra Air Station in May this year, ending a 5 year deployment and handing the running of the International Airport Met Office over to the Iraqis.   Today’s combat weather forecasters and observers of the Met Office form a sponsored reserve unit of the RAF. They can be found deployed in Camp Bastion as part of 904 Expeditionary Air Wing and at Kandahar Air Field providing the airfield Met services, and to date have won 54 Op Herrick medals. They operate 24-7, providing immediate and forecast weather information for British forces and her allies. This can vary from troops on the ground who want to know whether the waddi’s will be dry or running with water, to the visibility in an approaching dust storm for the helicopters lifting those troops around the area, to specialised wind and thermal information allowing the eyes in the sky to operate. In today’s increasingly technology based warfare the meteorological and environmental picture is becoming more and more important, nothing fly’s on Op Herrick without first speaking to a forecaster from the Mobile Met Unit, I think you’ll find.   Compiled by  Goldie Dawn (Op TELIC and Op HERRICK) Crown Copyright 2009   Met Office Ascension Island Base