How can it get better than this?
"Incredible!" I agreed, equally captivated, but despite the happy forecast my imagination began transforming those wispy waifs from beauty into beasts. "All that billowy development bodes ill for later," I said to Jean. "Those clouds may be pretty now, but don't set your heart on flying back to Flagstaff this evening." Sure enough, when I checked the weather after lunch, thunderstorms were popping up all over the place. The radar images, however, were as unusual as the clouds themselves had been. Instead of the customary green and yellow blobs congealing into red-tinged clumps and lines, hoards of tiny ruby-centered cells formed up like acne across the face of Arizona.
Not surprisingly, the forecast had changed from rosy to menacing; it now called for violent weather at least until 10 p.m. Despite the ominous predictions, I monitored Internet radar all day in hopes that an unanticipated lull might allow us to depart before nightfall. Several times when imagining hints of an improvement trend, I phoned flight service seeking a second opinion. It's a 30-minute drive to the airport, so with the afternoon waning, any head start would glean us precious daylight aloft. Coincidentally I got the same briefer each time, and by the third call, I was getting on her nerves. "Nothing has changed!" she said, clearly exasperated.
Despite everyone's pessimism, there were distinct signs of improvement around 5:30 p.m., so Jean and I hightailed it toward the airport in hopes that that the remaining weather might dissipate before we got there. As we turned south from town into open country, however, new doubts arose about whether we'd be able to take off. Gargantuan storm clouds spilled shafts of rain across the southern horizon, and the fiercest of them seemed within striking range of Falcon Field.
Cringing, I phoned flight service for yet another update and learned from a new briefer that there were no longer significant echoes northward along our route. What's more, the ominous cells filling our car windshield had been almost stationary for hours on end. "As heavy as those cells may appear southeast of Phoenix, they are moving northwest at only four knots. You should have no problem departing to the north before they arrive," said the briefer.
Breathing sighs of relief, Jean and I took to the air. We bypassed a lingering rain shower and steered through clearing skies toward Flagstaff.
The sun now lay low on the horizon, while high above us remained only a thin silvery overcast. Golden rays illuminated distant thunderheads to the east, while those far to the west were silhouetted in platinum.
"Amazing how the most dangerous weather is so often the most beautiful," Jean observed. In this desert region of endless skies and unobstructed views, clouds seldom appear. When they do materialize, it's rarely the grey blanket familiar to other parts of the country. Rather, individual clouds sail like ghostly ships across skies of bottomless blue, dominating the terrain at least as much as the largest earthly mountains. After all, even 12,000-foot peaks are humbled before a 50,000-foot thunderhead.
We were discussing the many beautiful sights we'd experienced along this recurring route when suddenly the lowering sun astonished us by bathing the normally monotonous high desert beneath us in shades of electroluminescent green. "How are those colors possible?" Jean asked. "We haven't had that much rain."
Neither of us had ever seen such hues in this arid country. Sure, the deep indigo sky floated overhead and a rainbow of ever-more-distant thunderstorms lined the western horizon--but beautiful as they were, we had seen such sights before. This fluorescent greening of brown terrain, transitioning as it did from lime fire on the horizon to glowing emerald beneath our wings, defied logic and experience.
We were still marveling when a scarlet notch cracked the jade landscape ahead. The sun, reddening as it lowered, now illuminated crimson rock and golden clouds near Sedona. After watching rock pinnacles transmute beneath us from orange to burgundy to lavender, we skimmed the 7,000-foot edge of the Coconino Plateau. Now a deep-forested pine carpet anchored our golden backdrop of silhouetted thunderstorms. "It can't get better than this," I said to Jean. Surely the amazing show would now end. But it didn't.
Approaching Flagstaff, we noted a narrow string of clouds paralleling our route to the west--from them a paper-thin band of virga streamed unbroken out of sight. The sun straddled the horizon as we turned base for landing, igniting that watery drapery into a shimmering yellow-orange curtain that entirely consumed the great Western sky.
Stunned, we banked for a short moment away from that fiery veil to where Flagstaff's runway floated under a salmon sky in purple-green dusk. Eyes wide with wonder, Jean and I turned eagerly back after landing to drink in more beauty, but to our disappointment the polychromatic symphony had abruptly and utterly ended.
Why didn't we think to circle for a moment? Like fleeting youth the radiant sky had aged in an instant from strawberry hair and azure eyes to dignified shades of silver lined with streaks of grey. A heavy brow now shaded the dying sky, and our hearts filled with regret at missing priceless seconds of awe. That regret was soon tinged with remorse, for surely our wheels kissing the Earth had commanded the finale to this fairyland flight.
Greg Brown was the 2000 National Flight Instructor of the Year. His books include Flying Carpet, The Savvy Flight Instructor, The Turbine Pilot's Flight Manual, Job Hunting for Pilots, and You Can Fly! Visit his Web site.
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