It was the perfect weather scenario: a huge high-pressure system rolling in from the west, making tomorrow's VFR round-robin business flight a sure bet. For good measure, I glance at the low-pressure system and associated front lurking way south of the area. Quite a mess, but not a factor. You can count on these big highs to deflect lows and their motley fronts, too — sending them off to wherever lows go when they don't come here. By morning, that stuff probably won't even be on the map. So, got it made. There's even a chance to gloat as I contemplate the data: The isobars, which you can use to visualize winds flowing around this nice high, are few and far between. Not only will it be a nice day, but it will be a windless one. This is good news, considering that I will be flying with a business associate who has never before flown in a single-engine airplane.
So now it's tomorrow. Why am I sitting here writing a magazine article when I should be out flying? A mechanical problem with the airplane?
The airplane's fine. But the weather is rotten. That low that didn't stand a chance against the big old high? Well, here it is, spreading fog and low clouds into all quadrants and sprinkling columns of rain around. Down on the coast where we were headed, things are doubtless worse. And I hear on the news that the same frontal movement is generating severe thunderstorms inland, as the low injects moisture into the unstable zone between itself and the high. At least tomorrow is supposed to be much nicer, with another high building in, and all the weird weather headed east. It'll be a sure thing tomorrow....
What went wrong? The surprise weather came about because of a big-picture scenario that did not develop exactly as logic and experience would suggest. The likely best case turned to unlikely worst case. But both were possible all along. A more skeptical reading — and no gloating — would have resulted in less surprise.
Not all the trickery of weather is found lurking in the big picture, however. Local conditions can have just as much impact — and since not every pilot knows every locality, this is always a risk factor in flying. This evening we are sitting, not in a cockpit, but around a table in the backyard, about to be served a home-cooked, Korean-style meal by a neighbor who is a native of that country. It has been a hot, humid day; and although the sun is setting, it is still way too muggy to sit and eat in the house. A few minutes into our meal, everyone notices how rapidly it is cooling down outside. A breeze springs up. We dash inside and return to the table wearing sweatsuits. It seems unusually dark for the hour. I look up and observe fragments of scud sailing past, low overhead.
Now I know what is happening: A sea breeze of unusual intensity has begun to blow. Rarely does the advection fog that it drags across the coast penetrate this far inshore, some 20 miles from the bay. Fog will now settle in thickly and not depart until the sun is high — when thermal heating combined with prevailing northwesterlies gets the upper hand once again; sometime tomorrow, possibly later than noon. It is a chilly thing to watch, but I am happy to sit here and enjoy the show. Years ago, while flying photographers along the eastern shore of a hilly island one warm afternoon, I was spared diversion to a distant inland airport by a radio call from the home base, advising me that just such a fog was making an early march. I and several other pilots flying in the vicinity had to sort things out briefly as we arrived back at the nontowered airport — and the glider pilot had a few tense minutes picking his hole — but all had ducked under and landed by the time the field went zero-zero. Sitting in the backyard and fumbling with my chopsticks this summer evening, I wonder if anyone has run such a race today.
Occasionally, you can look weird weather in the face and still do not know it's there.
Idling at Taxiway Juliet, 1,000 feet from the approach end of Runway 33 at Bangor (Maine) International Airport, we were first in line for takeoff. A Delta MD-80 was second, at the runway end. A crisp, 15-knot breeze blew from the northwest.
Approaching the field from that direction on this sunny summer day, too far away to be a factor (like that low), floated one lonely cloud with a faint trail of precipitation extending from its base. I attended to some cockpit chores, and when I looked back, I wondered: Had it moved that much closer already? Had it grown? Perhaps both? The precip trail was more distinct now. It appeared that we would have to fly through the trail during our initial climb, unless we could get a very early turn from the tower. Either option seemed OK. The precip was light, and we could see quite clearly through it to the other side.
The air traffic controller, an old acquaintance of mine who is a pilot, cleared us for takeoff, but he also advised of a sudden increase in wind speed.
The cell looked darker now. I declined the takeoff clearance. Before he could offer Delta the runway, the wind speed had more than doubled. Delta now also elected to stay put. The wind grew still stronger, and we could see the northwest end of the runway disappearing in a torrent of rain. I turned the airplane into the wind and announced that I was shutting down. If we go over, there's no reason to do so with the prop turning, I thought. In a few seconds the rain and the wind — clearly a downdraft radiating outward from the cell after touching down — reached us. We sat in the dark, holding full down elevator into the gale. The controller called out the changing velocity, sounding like an auctioneer selling something priced in knots. I vowed never to loosely tie down an airplane again. When the freak storm had passed, the only remaining evidence of the frontal passage was a steady 20-kt wind from the northwest. But by then, we weren't really in the mood to fly. I talked about it later with the old salts. They smiled and shrugged.
Weird weather. Not all agreed about shutting down the engine, but after all, it had turned out OK. What I remember most is how close I came to taking off into that nasty little trap.
Some weather seems weird, but when you think about it some more, it really isn't. Such was the case on a smooth, very cold winter night. In the other seat was a veteran whose flight time amounts to 10 years of 40-hour weeks in the cockpit. But that night, he said, he experienced the worst single jolt of turbulence of his flying career — not in an airliner in the flight levels but in a Cessna 172 below 2,000 feet. Smooth, hands-off flight for an hour, now descending to land, and — wham!
Clunk, really, for that was the sound as the head of our loosely belted, rear-seat passenger connected with the cabin roof. I thought it was the sound of wings coming off. The heavy flight case on the seat beside him floated for an astonishingly long moment. But the mystery went out of the thing when we factored in our low altitude, the strongly flowing wind from the north, and our passage just south of a solitary 1,800-foot hill. The words wind shear seemed to explain everything on this "smooth" night.
And made me more suspicious of the weather than ever.
The moral of these tales? Never let down your guard. Tomorrow may be forecast as clear and a million, but I'll still wonder how I'll get where I'm going if the airport is socked in, or how I'll get home if it socks in after I land. Never loosen your seatbelt. Our passenger found that out. This happens on airliners all the time. Keep those obedient passengers from unhooking their seatbelts the second the light goes off; it would reduce everyone's health insurance rates. Maybe doing so gets the airline marketing department upset.
Be skeptical even of big, predictable weather patterns, like big highs that are supposed to keep those nasty lows at bay. We pilots are on our own here more than we used to be. A few years ago, amendments to terminal forecasts were numbered. If a forecast was only two hours old and it had already been amended seven times, you knew that the weather was weird. Nowadays you get a new forecast, but you don't know how many "old new ones" were previously issued. This is a valuable piece of intelligence for making a go/no-go decision.
Beware of "little" clouds drifting across your path. Don't fly under them if they are trailing precip, especially at low altitude where a downdraft could spoil your day. I consider myself pretty cautious — chicken, sometimes — but on the day I faced my challenge, it was the brother pilot and all-around good fellow in the tower who alerted me to the danger at hand. Who says everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it?
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