Weather is one of the most interesting aspects of flying. Just like a squirrel with acorns, I love to store weather tidbits to recall at a later date. At times, this makes a flight easier. At times, it dictates a change of plans. It can also cause an extra degree of caution. I will always remember a day over North Carolina, when the controller said, somewhat impatiently, that my deviation would take me more than 30 miles away from any precipitation he was painting. I explained to him that the cloud was greenish-yellow and that 50 miles might be even better. I had seen tornado-spawning thunderstorms before, and this one bore a remarkable resemblance — both to me and to the people in the towns it blew away.
More recently, flying from Maryland to Ohio, I ran up on one of my more trustworthy weather acorns. The winds aloft were forecast to be light southerly, and the weather was supposed to be pretty good both in the Cincinnati and Dayton areas, both of which I would visit before the day ended. The little green airplane had not flown very far westward before it was in clouds and rain. A rough guess on wind aloft can be made just looking at the drift angle and groundspeed, but it is more fun, as well as more accurate, to let the Bendix/King KLN 88 loran do the calculating. It said south at 50 knots, which was far in excess of the forecast. More southerly, or a stronger than forecast southerly wind aloft, means worse weather than forecast.
That morning, checking the weather, everything had suggested good conditions, both for the flying and for the grand celebration of Hartzell Propeller's seventy-fifth anniversary at the Piqua (Ohio) Airport. Rain on the windshield and that strong southerly flow made the forecast a moot point.
We were to land at Batavia, Ohio, first. It is just east of Cincinnati, so I listened to the ATIS from Cincinnati Municipal-Lunken Field when about 100 miles out. It reported excellent conditions. I listened again when 50 miles out, and it was reporting something like 2,000 overcast with the visibility restricted in rain. That was worse than forecast but no surprise.
There was some wind shear turbulence in the descent, and it was raining as we flew a circling approach to Batavia.
Piqua is about a 30-minute flight, straight north from Batavia. It was raining when we took off, and it rained until we were about 25 miles south of Piqua on what had turned out to be a cold day in late May.
It rained on Hartzell's cookout (for the town), air show, and fireworks display, but only the crowd was dampened. The enthusiasm was just fine.
The wind blew, too, rather strongly out of the southeast. That meant there was a low-pressure storm system to the south or southwest, and I went to bed that night wondering how the weather would be for flying home the next morning.
Nothing changed much. It was raining, and the wind was still out of the southeast. There were a lot of airplanes at the airport, and all the pilots would likely show up at the same time, wanting to leave. I called the Dayton FSS, and they patched me through to the tracon. I explained to the supervisor that a lot of airplanes would be trying to leave Piqua IFR and asked if he had any suggestion on how to best handle the matter. He said to just call on the telephone for a clearance, and they would get everyone out as quickly as possible. He did add that if we could take off VFR and call them — he said it would take about 1,000 feet above the ground — that it could be handled more expeditiously. A glance out the window confirmed that telephone clearances would be the only way to go.
The weather briefing, from the FSS, revealed that there was a level- three thundershower down around Cincinnati, scattered rain around the rest of the area, and the tops were uniform at 15,000 feet except in the thundershower. The weather over in Maryland, home, was forecast to be excellent. That all sounded better than it looked on a windy and rainy morning.
The volume of the rain was accentuated by the metal T-hangar that my airplane had passed out in the night before. The rain was making loud noises on the tin roof. The first duty was to get a Baron going that was parked on the entrance ramp to the T-hangar. Then we pulled my airplane out and taxied to the office.
The telephone was in a leaky booth outside. By the time we got to it, the Baron pilot had his clearance and said he was out of there.
Someone else, in a Twin Comanche, called from another telephone and got the next clearance. The controller whom I was talking with asked me to just hold the line and said that I would get the next clearance. As I stood there contemplating the rain, I thought of another acorn. For the raindrops to be as big as these appeared to be, the cloud tops were likely high, not at the 15,000 feet reported by the FSS.
By the time I got my clearance, the rain had abated somewhat.
Timed clearances have to be used with caution, lest something be rushed. This morning, I had 10 minutes in which to board two soaked passengers and one soaked pilot, do the necessary items, and take off. I had run the check list before starting to taxi over to the office, but it needed a recheck. The clearance was dirt simple, "as filed," so that was no distraction. Still, 10 minutes is not long.
What happens when you put three warm and wet bodies in an airplane on a cool morning? The windows all steam up. The defroster didn't help, but the heated element on the windshield made a clear area through which to look. I wanted to see, too, because something had been towed across the runway from the field — probably the fireworks wagon from the night before — and there were large clumps of mud on the runway that I wanted to steer around.
Seven minutes after I got the clearance, we launched into the rain and the murk. I could talk to Dayton out of about 400 feet, and as soon as they said the magic "radar contact" words, I knew that the pilot of the following Cardinal RG would get his clearance and start doing the 10-minute tap dance.
I had major curiosity about what the weather would really be like, and in answer to my question, the controller said that some pilots had reported general tops at 10,000 feet but that there were a lot of higher tops around, especially to the east. The Stormscope showed nothing ahead, and the radar was attenuated at about 10 miles in the general rain. The controller said that all he saw was rain.
The air was neither bumpy nor smooth. It was what you might call "bothered," for lack of a better word.
I had filed for Flight Level 190 in hopes of a smooth ride up there. Climbing through 10,000 feet, we started breaking through the tops, and at about 12,000, we were above the general cloud bases. There were, though, a lot of buildups ahead.
It turned out to be one of those weather systems in which a hot little turbocharger is worth more than it costs. At FL190, I could see that a deviation to the right for a while would keep the airplane clear of all clouds. That was approved and done, and at one point, I inquired about the health of my friend flying the Baron. The controller replied that he was doing okay, though he had made an altitude change because of ice at 11,000 feet. The pilot later told me that he had moments of turbulence, which was easy to believe because the buildups I was going around had tops up to about 25,000 feet. They were making no sparks, and they were easy to see on the radar. Flying at a lower altitude, though, there would have been no way to avoid all of them without a look at the big picture, as from FL190.
By the time we got to Morgantown, West Virginia, the cloud tops had all gone flat. While the forecast for home was good, I wondered if the computers had really caught on to the stronger than anticipated southerly flow. The answer was no. When I got within range of the Dulles ATIS, it was reporting 2 miles visibility in rain. One of my weather acorns got a bit blown away here, too. The cloud picture in the windshield was flat, with tops not over 15,000 feet. A condition like that doesn't usually support a lot of rain. This morning was an apparent exception. The clouds might not have been tall, but they sure contained and released a lot of moisture. They must have been moving out of the southeast, from over the ocean.
The Baltimore ATIS, on the other side of my base at Carroll County, was reporting about 2,000 overcast with some rain, so I felt like the weather for landing would be okay. There was an airplane released off Carroll County, so the controller gave me holding instructions. I told him I would slow down a bit to delay the arrival, and as I was entering the holding pattern, he cleared me for the approach.
It had been an interesting couple of days of weather, with no forecast quite matching actual conditions. That's not bad news, it is just reality. The good news is that the air traffic control system works so well between uncontrolled general aviation airports. That is a resource to preserve and protect.
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