The Trip That Wasn?t
 

“The Weather is what the weather is – not what we want it to be…..”

Sometimes, we have to remind ourselves that no matter how hard we stare at the weather charts and reports, they aren’t going to change to show what we want. Such is the case today as a mixture of rain, snow and ice moves across the northern Arizona region where I was hoping to be tomorrow. Louise has been out at Grand Canyon for some work meetings this week, and I was going to join her for a couple of days and give her a ride home. The Flagstaff RV guys had even arranged a hangar for the Valkyrie, and I was hoping to meet some new friends, but alas, I can’t file IFR into an area of icing, and the various web cams out in the region show rocks disappearing into clouds, with fog and showers obscuring the canyon itself. Supposed to stay that way through Friday, so I guess I’ll stay in Houston and head out west another time.

What is really amazing about this system is that it was predicted a week ago! Generally speaking, I figure that weather forecasts are more or less in the same ballpark as reality about 24 hours out. Three or Four days in the future? Well, those are good guesses based on climatology and whether or not the region is generally in a monsoon season or not (In Houston, we have a 30% chance of rain and thundershowers every single day between April and November – and that forecast is ALWAYS correct!). But Seven days in advance? It’s like they teach about a wreck in motor racing – steer for the wreck, it won’t be there when you reach the same point! But this weather system was called almost to the day about this time last week – remarkable!

A reasonable route from Houston to Flagstaff would have taken me around the north end of the White Sands restricted areas – a sixty mile deviation that only added about 10 miles to the total trip length. It also keeps me over lower terrain (nothing much over 8,000’), and gently climbs the entire way. I figured a fuel stop in eastern New Mexico, and another for cheap gas in St. John’s would have made fuel a non-issue. Looking at actual forecast's numbers, it might be easy to convince oneself that the clouds were only going to be “few”, “scattered” and “broken” at the lower layers, and a Flat-Lander might think that going to have a look would be OK – but my recent education in mountain flying has generated a healthy conservatism when it comes to ragged clouds with rising rocks. And IFR works great – so long as you don’t have icing forecasts, which is highly unlikely when snow showers are in the TAF.

As usual, I started looking seriously at the weather about 48 hours ago, picked out some good fuel stops, thought about winds and generally psyched myself up for some serious flying. I don’t concentrate so much on actual versus forecast conditions, but rather on how much the forecasts themselves are changing – changes to forecasts show a general uncertainty as to what the atmosphere is doing, and once I get a feel for that, I can look at the METARS and TAF’s with a better appreciation for how much I can trust either of them. In this case, as much as I wanted to not believe what I was seeing, the reports were rock solid, and unchanging. So we’ll make the trip another day, and fly around in the sunny warm weather at home. This was one of the first times that I thought of using local Webcams to get a feel for things directly – a very valuable tool, especially in an area without a lot of weather reporting stations or forecasts. There is nothing like looking at the weather first-hand to make you decide that it’s not something you want to go play with.

Canyon Web Cam at Noon:


Grand Canyon Airport Web Cam (There are ROCKS in them clouds!):


The sting of cancelling the trip is offset by the comfort of knowing it’s a good decision – too many airplanes and people get busted up on vacation…..

Paul

Thanks, Paul,
 

for the constant reminder. Even with all these wiz-bang tools we have at our disposal, there are times when we say, "NO!" Just a couple of hours ago, I was watching all the videos you have put on YouTube, some with flying in the mountains and the synthetic vision in play. Even with all that, you chose NOT to make the flight knowing what the weather was. You may have saved your life today and possibly others by sharing your decision not to make the flight. Thanks again for your words of wisdom and for all your input into these forums. :D

What are you Chicken? There's nothing wrong with that stuff!:rolleyes:

I've heard that in Alaska, they call that type of weather.....Tuesday

Those are called cumulogranite clouds, Paul

I'm staring at the my wall poster but man I still can't find that one on my cloud chart ;)

I'm looking at some............right out my window as I type this. They're all over the place!

L.Adamson --- RV6A

Today was somewhat like those webcam shots, with occasional holes. Oddly enough, there are clouds at the Mogollon rim (30 miles south) but clear and starry overhead right now. Tomorrow will be more of the same varying conditions, not something you really want to bet on. A few miles east and 2000 feet lower, it looks a lot better but you have to cross a lot of poor terrain to get there and no way to guarantee you can stay clear of visible moisture. Given the icing conditions, that's the real show-stopper. I think you made a good choice.

I'm about 330nm west of FLG (and 3000ft lower) and this is what I woke up to yesterday.



Pardon the pic quality, but it was the best I could do before sunrise with a cheap 1Mp phone camera.

And yes, this was predicted last week. More of the same today: Another inch of snow overnight and
METAR
KTSP 221115Z AUTO 00000KT M1/4SM -FZRA OVC001 00/00 A2966 RMK AO2

I'm sure this is headed for northern Arizona too. Jeez, the calendar tells me we are a month into spring...:rolleyes:

Just to add insult to injury, we only got a dusting of snow last night, and right now the ceilings are above 12k with blue sky to the west. Check out this webcam at 6:20 today. However, conditions are changing rapidly - check out the same camera 15 minutes earlier.

The point I'm making is not "Paul should have come; it's getting better". It's more like, "look how quickly it can change here." If he launched now thinking that it's clearing, he could arrive this afternoon to find it socked in again. I still think Paul made a good choice; flying into uncertainty is no fun at best and deadly at worst.

For fun, look at yesterday's image at the same time. To get a sense of scale, the base level of the mountain is about 7000 feet, and the top is at about 12,500 feet.