Wx Watch: Ahead of the Weather

One of the phrases continually tossed around in aviation circles has to do with a pilot’s ability to anticipate. "He’s behind the airplane," one flight instructor might say to another, speaking of a student’s problems with slowing down an airplane in the traffic pattern or with setting up navigation equipment for an approach. We tend to think of someone who’s "behind the airplane" as someone who’s rusty on their operational or judgmental skills with regard to the act of flying. But what about how pilots cope with weather? Are some pilots "behind the weather?" By this, I refer to pilots who fail to think of managing the weather as a flying work load that is as important as the skills involved in manipulating the controls.

Somewhere along the line, some pilots seem to have developed a tendency to compartmentalize weather in their flight planning. Sure, they obtain weather information. But when it comes to applying that information to the flight at hand, it’s another story. There’s a focus on the route, the winds aloft, and fuel reserves, but weather is all too often paid lip service. Maybe this is because some don’t really understand what they’re seeing or hearing as they collect weather information. Or maybe it’s because of overconfidence. Or maybe it’s because of a failure to understand when the weather work loads could be highest.

It’s helpful to organize your thinking about weather-related decision making around the phases of flight. This can keep you from "getting behind" the weather.

Preflight

In terms of weather work load, this phase of flight carries the highest burden. It’s when you collect the most weather information. It’s when your information-gathering environment is the calmest, the most conducive to analysis. It’s the first chance you have to alter your flight plan to accommodate the weather. It’s when you make your go/no-go decision. It’s when you have your last chance to call things off before launching into the elements.

As you go through the preflight weather briefing information, continually ask yourself the following questions: Am I legally, physically, and emotionally fit to fly this route? Am I skilled enough as a pilot to take on whatever weather may await? Am I experienced enough? Have I flown in the forecast conditions before? Are mountains or high terrain factors? Will it be night? Will there be long overwater legs? Are there sigmets or airmets nearby, and are they backed up by pilot reports? Can my airplane help me to avoid thunderstorms or icing? Finally, have I flown this route before, and am I familiar with the en route and destination airports?

Obviously, factors such as a lack of experience, a minimally equipped airplane, night, mountains, adverse weather, and unfamiliarity should urge you to postpone the flight until conditions improve.

By making these kinds of honest assessments about your piloting skills and qualifications, the environment, and your airplane, you can identify and eliminate the main risk factors that can lead up to most deadly types of weather accidents—those where VFR-only pilots press on into deteriorating weather. If you’re ever going to be "ahead of the weather," it will be in the preflight phase, when you’re sitting in a briefing room or in front of your computer screen.

En route

Here, your weather work load depends upon the weather. If it’s severe clear, well, there’s little weather-related decision making in the offing. You chose to take off, the weather is as advertised, and your job is pretty much limited to operating the airplane and following normal procedures. You can call flight watch to keep up with any late-breaking changes in the weather along your route (and offer pilot reports); listen to HIWAS information over designated VOR frequencies; and dial in ATIS, AWOS, or ASOS frequencies for the weather at airports along the way.

But remember this: Once you’ve taken off and left the departure airport’s vicinity, you’re in a different world. Now the weather isn’t set down on neatly printed pages or carefully copied METARs or TAFs. You’ll get what you get, and you have to deal with it. Forecasts can be incorrect, and you should be prepared for this.

This is especially true in the warmer months of the year, when convective forces can make thunderstorms quickly materialize where they weren’t forecast—all because of highly localized phenomena.

You should learn of any weather problems in advance—because you’ve been keeping up with flight watch and/or center weather advisories (CWAs—if you’re on an IFR flight plan or are using VFR flight following services). If you haven’t been updated or paying close attention to the sky around you, then you’re prime meat for a nasty weather surprise.

When the clouds build around you, when you notice the first distant flashes of lightning, or see returns on your lightning detection equipment or contouring precipitation on your weather radar (if so equipped) or observe a growing darkness up ahead, well, that’s when the weather work load can reach its peak. All those preflight notes and calculations you made back on the ground? You might as well throw most of them out of the window if you stumble into deteriorating weather. Now you’ll have to really start thinking ahead of both the airplane and the weather.

Of course, you did identify alternate airports along your route, so you know where to turn if a precautionary landing is necessary. And if you don’t have an instrument rating or aren’t current on instruments if you do, then you will maintain visual separation with any clouds—ideally.

If things start falling apart and you find yourself inadvertently entering clouds and/or adverse conditions, here are a few general tips that can help to keep you healthy—and ahead of the weather:

• Keep the wings level. In moderate or severe turbulence, reduce airspeed to the appropriate VA—the maneuvering speed for your airplane’s weight—and if you’re using an autopilot, disengage it.
• Perform a 180-degree turn if conditions permit. The standard advice is to not turn around if you’re caught in a thunderstorm, the theory being that you could overstress the airframe in a turn should gusts overload the wings.
• Bear your minimum safe altitude in mind. Don’t drop below it, or bust an MEA (minimum en route altitude).
• Climb or descend? That depends on your current altitude (see the previous recommendation) and the nature of the weather system you’ve entered. Climbing in building cumulus is a no-no: You’ll never outclimb it, and the danger of severe icing and turbulence is apt to increase dramatically with altitude. In stratus clouds—typical of warm frontal conditions—you may be able to climb to on-top conditions or reach an altitude that’s between cloud layers. This is where turbocharging comes in handy—ice protection equipment, too, if outside air temperatures are below freezing.
• Call for help. You’ll be busy flying, so hand as much of the weather work load off to ATC as you can. If you’re having trouble with turbulence-induced altitude excursions, fly attitude. Don’t try to maintain an altitude, lest you overstress the airframe. If you were flying under VFR, try the emergency frequency—121.5 MHz. If you are instrument-rated, you could call the ATC frequency appropriate for your area and airfile an IFR flight plan—after asking for advice on the best way out of your weather predicament. If flying IFR, tell ATC that you need vectors out of harm’s way. Just remember that ATC radar is designed for traffic surveillance, not weather avoidance. Even so, the meteorologists serving with center weather service units (CWSUs) at air route air traffic control centers (ARTCCs) do have weather radars and can relay useful advice to you via your controller. Also, you can ask for a block altitude that ranges several thousand feet vertically. This would let you legally ride out those altitude excursions as you try to fly that constant attitude.
• A note about the old advice to steer toward the lighter patches of cloud to escape instrument conditions: It doesn’t always work. In stratus conditions, the rule works because sunlight illuminates the upper portions of stratus layers very well. When you climb in stratus clouds, you can always tell when you’re reaching the upper limits of the cloud by the progressive brightening. This assumes that conditions aren’t overcast above the layer that you’re flying through; any higher cloud layers would, of course, block out the sun. In cumulus situations, steering toward a bright spot could be a very bad move: You may be seeing the brightly lit side of a nearby towering cumulus or cumulonimbus.
• Consider a precautionary landing. If you’re not prepared to accept the risks associated with pressing on in adverse weather, get ready to carry out your diversion to an alternate airport. (Of course, you’ve already identified these during the preflight weather briefing). With ATC’s help, you should be able to find the nearest airport experiencing better weather.

Arrival

From your preflight briefing and in-flight updates, you should have a good general idea of what weather to expect for your landing. If the weather is reasonably nondynamic (for example, dominated by high pressure or lacking any strong frontal activity), your weather work load will be a nonevent.

But throw in nearby turbulence, icing, or convective activity, and you’ll work up a sweat as you attempt to thread your way to the runway. It’s one thing to be forewarned about bad weather at your destination; it’s quite another to be surprised by a blown forecast. In the former situation, you’ve made a conscious decision to accept the risks associated with a landing in dodgy weather—a decision best left to those with a fair amount of time flying in challenging weather.

But for a low-time pilot or one without a lot of instrument experience, a bad-weather surprise at the destination can be a real shocker. Again, ask yourself the same questions you posed during the preflight: Is high terrain nearby? Is it night? Am I unfamiliar with the airport and its environment? Is the weather—and this includes strong crosswinds—pushing my skill or experience envelopes? If you answer "yes" to any of those questions, it’s time to call for help and divert to an airport with better weather and friendlier terrain.

By now, you’ve probably figured out the moral of the story: Your best opportunity to avoid adverse weather is during the preflight stage of flight. Once you’ve taken off, you’re in the real world, and you have to be prepared to change plans at a moment’s notice should things not turn out as well as forecast. To a large extent, being prepared means anticipating the worst that could happen, given the weather systems at hand, and mentally reviewing what your weather-related work load could be. Experienced weather pilots have an easier time of this, because they’re more skilled at dividing their attention between the tasks associated with operating the airplane and the tasks associated with flying in adverse conditions. In short, they’re more skilled at doing several things at once and are less rattled by flying in bad weather.

Grizzled IFR veteran or newly minted private pilot, always consider the risk factors we reviewed earlier. Flying at night to an unfamiliar airport in mountainous settings, with low ceilings and gusty winds, will break a sweat on a high-time instrument pilot. For a neophyte, such a setup could well prove deadly. The only way both can avoid it is to play by conservative guidelines, minimizing risk by minimizing weather work load.

Links to additional information on weather decision making may be found on AOPA Online ( www.aopa.org/pilot/links/links0005.shtml). E-mail the author at [email protected].