The more dreaded of the two is a thunderstorm. Even heavy air transport aircraft are not capable of flying through strong thunderstorms. My personal strategy for surviving more than 30 years of flying without a thunderstorm encounter has been to give them wide berth. In my experience, flying any closer than 25 nautical miles to a strong cell can cause a very rough ride.
Of course, the safest strategy that a pilot can employ to avoid thunderstorms may be staying on the ground. The airplanes we fly just don't have the range and speed to make huge diversions around cells--or, worse, large areas of cells. In many cases I have found the best course of action to be simply waiting out the weather from the comfort of a fixed-base operation or a hotel room. It seems these situations often come up late on a Friday afternoon, when trying to depart for a weekend trip; early Saturday morning the sky almost always is blue and severely clear, compared to the darkened picture I looked at the evening before.
Storms do move, and with today's multimedia delivery of Nexrad Doppler weather radar images, it's easy to sit in the FBO or flight school and watch that movement on the Internet or television. I have found myself in this situation more than once, and studying the radar picture over time gives a pilot the best picture of what he can expect to encounter after takeoff. Today, thanks to GPS receivers with the ability to display weather information and graphics received via datalink--including some handhelds--some pilots have the capability to continue tracking the weather once we're in the air.
Why should thunderstorms be of interest to you if you're just beginning your training, you ask? Under ideal conditions, these storms can develop very quickly--and knowing what to look out for is your key to avoiding them.
"The take-home lesson for pilots is that even a small thunderstorm with no other thunderstorms nearby can be dangerous. In fact, a rain shower with no lightning can be on the verge of becoming a thunderstorm," Jack Williams notes in "The Weather Never Sleeps: Thunderstorm Take-Home Test" (p. 49). "A towering cumulus that is growing rapidly is a good candidate to become a thunderstorm."
The good news is that it's not difficult to avoid these violent storms. The key is to develop a basic understanding of aviation weather, and to learn how to use the avoidance tools at your disposal. The AOPA Air Safety Foundation has created an online repository of free thunderstorm information (www.asf.org/thunderstorms) to help you increase your knowledge of the subject.
Topping the list is the foundation's Weather Wise: Thunderstorms and ATC interactive course. The free online course shows you how air traffic controllers describe precipitation, what weather radar services controllers can offer, and how you can effectively communicate with air traffic control. The course takes approximately 45 minutes to complete, but your progress is automatically saved, so there's no need to finish in one sitting.
You can download an accompanying publication, the Thunderstorms and ATC Safety Advisor. It provides a closer look at ATC weather radar services and strategies for dealing with some of nature's most violent storms.
Finally, ASF's Thunderstorm Avoidance Quick Reference Card is a great resource for your flight bag or chart binder. It summarizes air traffic control weather radar capabilities and offers a variety of tips.
In addition, AOPA Flight Training's sister magazine, AOPA Pilot, published a series of very informative articles on the topics of thunderstorms and thunderstorm avoidance in its April 2008 issue. They're available for you to read online.
Take advantage of these resources today. Learn as much as you can about thunderstorms and how to avoid them--and develop knowledge that will be useful throughout your aviation experience.
For thunderstorm awareness resources, see the AOPA Air Safety Foundation's Web site.
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