By 1942, supervision of Army weather activities within the United States had been centralized in the Army Air Forces (AAF) Weather Service, headed by the Director of Weather on the Air Staff. However, in 1943 the AAF reorganized in an effort to move as many operations out of Washington DC as possible, and responsibility for the AAF Weather Service was transferred to Flight Control Command, which organized and activated the Weather Wing, Flight Control Command to manage this responsibility. This wing is the direct organizational ancestor of the 557th Weather Wing. By 3 May 1943 Flight Control Command had relocated the headquarters of the Weather Wing to Asheville, North Carolina. Although responsibility for the AAF Weather Service was returned to the Air Staff in July, the wing remained in North Carolina. Although the AAF Weather Wing commanded weather activities in the United States, it had no authority over those in overseas theaters of operations. It did influence those units, however, by establishing procedures and standards for them to follow and by defining weather equipment requirements for the Signal Corps and operationally testing the equipment.