Weather

Articles on Weather

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Flight Training Magazine

| July 1, 2025

The 'Big H' and 'Big L' Dynamic

By Thomas A. Horne

Checking the big-picture weather situation should be the first of your preflight briefing chores. In particular, you want to know where those big red “L” and blue “H” symbols are located on surface analysis charts. These indicate centers of low- and high-pressure systems, respectively—and they have everything to do with the conditions you can expect along your route.

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Pilot Magazine

| July 1, 2025

Thunderstorm season

Who doesn’t love to watch a thunderstorm unfold from a distance?

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Pilot Magazine

| July 1, 2025

Weather hazards and forecasts

Weather often plays the biggest role in our ability to fly when and where we want, and whether you’re a new or seasoned pilot flying VFR or IFR, the new Weather Hazards and Forecasts course brought to you by Sporty’s and SiriusXM Aviation offers great tips I’m confident you’ll be able to use on your next flight.

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Pilot Magazine

| July 1, 2025

Navigating instability

By JP Dice

With a background in meteorology, my former students and other pilots sometimes lean on me for help in decision making when it comes to weather. It is never an annoyance. In fact, I encourage them to reach out with a phone call or text to start a discussion. We are now in the midst of convective season when afternoon thunderstorms and even severe weather will be the norm across many parts of the United States. This kind of weather at the least can be aggravating and at the most can be deadly.

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Article

| May 22, 2025

Citation struck wires on approach

A Cessna Citation 550 struck high-voltage power lines while approaching Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego just before 4 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on May 22. The aircraft was approaching the end of the second leg of a long overnight from New York in instrument conditions and without the benefit of a local altimeter setting—which may become a focus of the NTSB investigation.

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Pilot Magazine

| May 1, 2025

Fallstreak holes

Standing outside your hangar, gazing skyward, have you ever seen an unusually sharp hole in the cloud deck above? If you have, was it circular, elliptical, or possibly square or rectangular?

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Pilot Turbine Magazine

| May 1, 2025

You go first

By J. Mac McClellan

Not long ago I landed with the reported visibility less than one-eighth of a mile and ceiling at 100 feet. It was easy because we had the runway in sight at least a couple miles from touchdown.

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Pilot Magazine

| May 1, 2025

The weather gap

March 3, 2020, at 3:28 p.m., N43368—a Piper PA-46 310P Malibu—was cleared for takeoff from Runway 23 at Columbia Metro Airport (CAE) in Columbia, South Carolina.

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Pilot Magazine

| May 1, 2025

Waiting for spring

Ah, spring. It comes with the promise of milder temperatures for your preflights, and ice-free weather for cruise segments. However, since it marks a change of seasons there’s a good chance that spring will throw some curveballs as the northern tier of states makes the transition from a generally cold climate to a much warmer one.

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Article

| April 8, 2025

AI airport weather stations may yet proliferate

On a wintry night in 1993, David Wartofsky departed Maryland’s Potomac Airfield (now inside the Washington, D.C., Special Flight Rules Area), flying under instrument flight rules in instrument meteorological conditions bound for General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport in Boston—without being able to conduct a radio check on the ground because Potomac had no unicom.

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Pilot Magazine

| March 1, 2025

Deadly decisions

It’s after dusk on November 1, 2020. As night falls, the weather turns windy with heavy, wet snow falling. A deer hunter is perched in his tree stand, which is located about two miles from the approach end of Runway 25 at the Chautauqua County/Jamestown Airport (JHW) in Jamestown, New York.

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Pilot Magazine

| March 1, 2025

Traps for the unwary

You can learn all about aviation weather’s big-picture features—lows, highs, fronts, convection, icing, and so on—but when it’s go-time and you’re aloft, your world shrinks to the view outside the cockpit.

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Flight Training Magazine

| February 28, 2025

The coastal marine layer

When writer Mark Twain famously quipped the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, he was referring to the damp “marine layer,” a West Coast weather feature with big implications for pilots.

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Article

| January 9, 2025

Weather reports going visual

The National Weather Service will retire the text-based traditional alphanumeric code, or TAC, airmet and area forecast (FA) reporting systems, for the continental United States, effective January 27.

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Flight Training Magazine

| January 1, 2025

Let it snow

Flying in snowy conditions presents a unique set of challenges and delights, and while it can be intimidating, snow doesn’t necessarily have to keep you grounded.

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Pilot Magazine

| January 1, 2025

Safe flights start on the ground

By JP Dice

Why does it keep happening? Pilots keep flying into dangerous weather with often fatal results.

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Flight Training Magazine

| January 1, 2025

Flying in the cold

With a little care, most general aviation piston airplanes are capable of flying in temperatures much colder than we’re willing to endure—just consider all the airplanes that fly in Alaska during the winter months. These tips will keep you and your airplane warm and safe, and ensure enjoyable flying and peak aircraft performance in the cool dense winter air.

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Pilot Magazine

| December 1, 2024

An ill-fated flight

It’s 3:58 p.m. local time, Monday, October 26, 2020, near Lubbock, Texas. A small airplane emerges below the clouds traveling low to the ground through the freezing mist

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Pilot Magazine

| November 1, 2024

Ice Advice

From our student pilot days on, we’ve learned that airframe and propeller icing ranks high on the danger scale. Fly in icing conditions and you can expect that even small ice accretions can cause significant losses of lift, reductions of the stall angle of attack, plus increases in weight. These accretions are the product of supercooled (subfreezing yet still liquid) cloud droplets or precipitation that flash-freeze on wings, propellers, and any other airframe projection. The results are buildups defined by standardized icing accretion rates.

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Flight Training Magazine

| October 22, 2024

Never fly alone

Sometimes the sky can feel like a lonely place.

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Apps

| September 13, 2024

SiriusXM created content SiriusXM weather gives Mooney pilot choices

Alicia Sikes is a ‘pilot’s pilot.’ Her career has taken her from flying cargo to regional airlines, and eventually to becoming one of the first female captains at TWA. Today, she continues to serve as a captain for a major airline, but her passion for flying extends beyond her professional responsibilities.

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Pilot Magazine

| September 1, 2024

Frontal flying-then and now

Back in the 1970s I had a job flying new Cessna singles from the factory in Wichita to Cessna Pilot Centers along the East Coast. One flight was especially memorable because it involved flying through a rapidly developing frontal complex that featured a large area of aggressive, building thunderstorms. Not something you want to do in a Cessna 152 with a single nav/com, no transponder, no Stormscope, and certainly no datalink weather capability.

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Pilot Turbine Magazine

| September 1, 2024

Imaginary yardstick

By J. Mac McClellan

I’m sure you know that ISA is the international standard atmosphere. But if it’s “standard,” why does it produce such a profound impact on our flying and the way turbine airplanes perform?

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Article

| July 2, 2024

Backcountry caution advised

The AOPA Air Safety Institute cautioned pilots and organizers of backcountry events to be prepared for wind shifts, traffic management challenges, and high density altitude at larger events as interest in off-airport operations continues to grow.

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Pilot Magazine

| July 1, 2024

No one likes it

By JP Dice

“Is it going to be bumpy?” is usually my wife’s first question when we get in our Mooney to take a trip. Aliece Dice’s aversion to a bumpy flight has taught me a lot about turbulence avoidance and prediction that translates into my job as a corporate pilot.

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Flight Training Magazine

| June 1, 2024

Lifelines

As a flight instructor, one of the first lessons I teach is the imperative of pilot weather reports (pireps) in aviation safety.

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Pilot Magazine

| June 1, 2024

Getting Sirius

Whether you fly low and slow or high and fast, SiriusXM Aviation Weather gives pilots the weather information they need to make confident decisions from takeoff to landing, coast to coast. SiriusXM weather products including satellite, radar, and wind stream are available to AOPA members through AOPA Weather, and members are eligible for special rebate and free trial offers of SiriusXM.

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Pilot Magazine

| June 1, 2024

Winning Wx apps

As the question goes, “Is there an app for that?” When it comes to aviation weather the answer’s a resounding yes.

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Image Gallery

| May 2, 2024

Tornado struck GA side of Omaha

Ample warning from the National Weather Service saved many lives in tornado outbreaks on April 26 and April 27, though five people were killed and more than 100 injured in Oklahoma, Iowa, and Nebraska, where one tornado ravaged hangars and tossed aircraft into tangled heaps.

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Pilot Magazine

| May 1, 2024

Yaw dampers

By Rob Mark

Imagine you’re flying a Cessna 172 cross-country from Chicago to Wichita, and you encounter light to moderate turbulence.

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TRAINING & SAFETY

Articles on Weather

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