When a picture is deceiving

When I got back, my flying bud was fussing at me for flying so close to a fast moving front with TC's going to 55,000, lighting, and severe turbulance. I told him that when I deviated, the line was 80 miles away, at midpoint, it was 60 miles away, and when I hooked it around, about 40 miles away. I wasn't even close to it and was in clear smooth air. I will have to say a lightening storm from 60 miles away looks pretty spectacular at 14,000 feet.

His point was alwasy fly to the west side where the weather is diminishing instead of the building side. I told him that that would have put me right through the middle of it since it was still over Memphis and my deviation to the west side of it wouldn't have worked.

When I made the turn back on the east side of Birmingham, the front line was getting read to enter their airspace from the west.

After I got back and saw the picture, I then understood what he was talking about. Apparantly, the last shot on Flightaware used the last position of the storm superimposed on my flight path when I canceled IFR with approach. Based on that, I now know why he was fussing. I was in VFR conditions the entire time, however this still shot is so deceiving.

If I had flown direct with no deviation for LEX to M16, I would have flown directly through the red lines.

It's nice that your friends care enough to chew your a** when it looks like you are doing something stupid. And if that screen shot had been accurate, you would have earned the chewing.

You are right - after the fact, Flightaware's weather depiction can be a BIT off.

I almost got caught in that **** yesterday as well. We departed central Alabam and flew east for a while before turning north to Cartersville, GA. After we landed (45 minutes later) we spoke with the family there and they said a nasty storm rolled through no more than 5 minutes after we left.

I sure am glad these RV's are fast.

Web! Your buddy was right. Seems to me a better choice / decision would have been to go around it from the back /west side. It would have been shorter and MUCH safer. Use the pretty colors on your weather screen to see what trends are happening so you can avoid them! Moving infront of a storm like that is risky. IMHO this was an unnessary risk.

Any weather guru's should speak up, but I seem to remember dimly from the past that frequently detouring around the southwest side of a line of storms can be a bad choice. Something about new buildups propagating on the SW side in this hemisphere. Then again, maybe too many brain cells lost to breathing fiberglass dust last year.
At any rate, in my book, Webb did a very nice job of using all of the resources available to him and stayed very conservative and safe on this one.

$.02 worth.

I disagree this time

Geico266 said:

Web! Your buddy was right. Seems to me a better choice / decision would have been to go around it from the back /west side. It would have been shorter and MUCH safer. Use the pretty colors on your weather screen to see what trends are happening so you can avoid them! Moving infront of a storm like that is risky. IMHO this was an unnessary risk.

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Based on this one picture he would have been right. In this case, If I had gone westerly, I would have probably gone right through part of this cell and would have been in IMC. If I had gone straight, I would have entered the darkest red area so we both know that is not a choice. I was also concerned about what was behind it and building. Keep in mind the weather shown here is about 90 minutes after I landed and super-imposed on the flight path and this is a "one shot" picture.

I'll have to disagree with you on this one. With XM Weather on board, I did look at the cell. At the time, the heavy area was over 100 miles deep and stetched north-westerly past Memphis. If you turned my "hook" upside down, I would have been right in the middle of this very large cell and since it's summer, I was concerned about what was potentially building behind this cell.

Also the cell had a distinct southern border and no "trash" in front. When I first paralleled the cell, I was about 80 miles away. When I was parallelling the leading edge, I put my pointer on the gps on it and it was 59 NM away. The closest I ever got to it was when I hooked around Birmingham and was 40 miles away for the storm. Also it was heading on a track of about 160 degrees and my track was 190 degrees which kept me well ahead of the storm. If I needed to deviate more to the east, I would have.

Based on the info that I had at hand, input for Memphis, distance from the storm, what was behind that front, I made a decision that the backside looked far worse than the front side, stayed well clear of the storm, and landed with over 2 hours of fuel left.

I did some "doodling" on top of the map to represent what was more of realistic of what I saw. Keep in mind that I stayed in VFR conditions and didn't have to fly IMC on this IFR flight, and was able to keep a very large amount of distance between me and mother nature. Still think I was wrong?

I was watching this system at the same time he was flying. I think Webb took the appropriate route. It looked super nasty all the way back in to Arkansas during mid morning. East was clear, in fact west Georgia had almost 0 cloud cover.

Webb

Hey Webb looks to me you made a good call. You wouldnt be related to Peter Willmott from FDX and Carson Pierre Scott fame would you?

67MK Larry said:

Hey Webb looks to me you made a good call. You wouldnt be related to Peter Willmott from FDX and Carson Pierre Scott fame would you?

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Maybe in some distant family tree. Willmott is an old English name. Not a close relationship if there is one.

Web, I don't think you were wrong, you made it home in smooth air VFR, you must have made a good decision. I have had to poke along a front like that until I reached an area that was breaking up, going from red to yellow (indicating a trend to diminish). From my experiences I just like the back side because typically the storm is waining there, and moving away from me. You made the best choice with the info you had, just don't forget to look out the window once in awhile.

Glad you made it. BTW, this was a good chance for pilots to discuss how to "out run" weather....safely.

Geico266 said:

Glad you made it. BTW, this was a good chance for pilots to discuss how to "out run" weather....safely.

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A legitimate excuse for more horsepower!

L.Adamson

I'm not going to second guess your decision - you saw what you saw, and we're looking at one snapshot of radar. However, remember that the worst side of the storm is typically under anvil on the leading eage - the storm is moving in that direction and hail tends to get spit out in that area. Hail + Airplane = Really Bad

TODR

the_other_dougreeves said:

I'm not going to second guess your decision - you saw what you saw, and we're looking at one snapshot of radar. However, remember that the worst side of the storm is typically under anvil on the leading eage - the storm is moving in that direction and hail tends to get spit out in that area. Hail + Airplane = Really Bad

TODR

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Well put TODR! That's what I have been trying to say. I like the back side (no jokes here! ) where things are moving away from me.

Geico266 said:

Well put TODR! That's what I have been trying to say. I like the back side (no jokes here! ) where things are moving away from me.

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True, true, but I wasn't under the anvil. Believe me, I was looking for it in front of me. The first though I had was avoid a microburst. Generally I too take the backside but this was one large cell. Remember, I was about 60 miles out when alongside the middle of the front.

I have to agree with Webb on this - if this was a thin line, then it would be easy to find clear air on the back side, but since this appears to me to be more of a large "blob" of disturbed weather, and the destination was clearly going to be out front and in the clear, then I'd have run around in the clear VFR in front - the backside could easily be full of broken and overcast layers left over from the weather passage.

If I am confronted by a line, I like to get behind it, but every case is different. When it comes to thunderstorms, I have said many times that I like to fly around them VFR - that naturally gives me easier bailouts (it's called "running away!"). Staying 30 miles away and out front is a good place to be, and an awesome view!

Paul

The view was awesome. I was at 14,000 feet (and yes, with O2 on), and the light show coming from inside the cell was enough message for me to keep my distance even though it was over 60 miles away.

The towering cumulus just seemed to go up into heaven. According to ATC, tops were 55,000. All jet traffic was routed around, none through or overtop this beast. BTW - Atlanta ATC was at it's best while I was on center. The controller seemed more "personal" as I listened to him handling everybody's re-routes. Come to think of it, when I changed course, my call to him was a statement instead of a question...."turning heading 190 to avoid convective area" and his response was "N32WW thankyou"

I wish I had the camera with me on this one. I would have loved to catch a flash on film.

I ran across one of these monsters in NE once. This occurred when I had about 100 hr in my logbook. I learned a lot that day.

I was heading RVS-HYS-EAR to help my father ferry our CT to BZN after annual. I was going to catch Great Lakes out of EAR to DEN and then UA to home. When we got close to the KS-NE boarder, we started to see high cirrus to the west. A few minutes later, we got changed to a new center frequency where we heard the big iron asking for weather deviations - we then realized that this was the anvil of a large cell. We zoomed out on the XM and by golly, there it was, a full blown super cell - huge. It was heading west at 30+kt and the center was west north west of our position. We were heading NW at 115 kt (hey, not bad for a LSA).

I quickly started to do the math in my head and realized it was going to be close. As we started to get closer to EAR, the anvil was getting rather large and the meat of the storm was visible, looking very nasty, and everyone was asking for deviations. About 50 miles out I realized it was going to be tight at best, so I thought about options and I asked my father in the right seat for his thoughts. We both agreed that we needed to get north of the storm's track and look for a place to set down since the storm might over run us (less of a problem in any RV except the -12). Also, the crosswind runway was out at EAR due to construction, and the winds there were starting to shift and pick up - not a good combination.

We both agreed that it made sense to turn more north and head for Hastings (KHSI) while starting down out of 8500 (gave us 5kt more speed too). HSI had an AWOS, crosswind runways and a FBO with a hangar. He gave me a heading, set KHSI in the GPS and put the AWOS in the radio while I called Center and flew the airplane ("fly the airplane!" says the voice of my instructor). By the time we got to HSI, the anvil was well upon us, the ride was somewhat rough and the winds were now up to 15G22 (a lot for a LSA) but pretty much down the crosswind runway. Unfortunately, the gusts were swinging the direction by 20 deg or so. AWOS was still on the monitor frequency during the approach to identify wind shifts. A gust hit us in the flare but a quick burst of throttle and another flare, then we were down. Before we shut down, the winds were 17G28. That's a lot when your stall speed is 40kt. Needless to say, we kept the taxi very slow.

Got the airplane in the FBO's hangar and borrowed the courtesy car; my father ran me over to EAR to catch my flight to DEN. It was windy the whole way and we got some of those fat raindrops that indicated a strong updraft in the storm, but thankfully no hail. I got a seat on the left side of the EMB-120. The ride out of EAR wasn't too bad, continuous light with occasional moderate, but this was a much larger airplane. We had sight of the storm the whole way to DEN. We pretty much went weat all the way to CYS watching the storm the whole way, then swung south to DEN. The storm was a monster and had caused a ground stop (arrivals and departures) for DEN not long after our airplane had departed DEN for EAR.

Had we gone on to EAR, we would have been well above the airplane's crosswind limitation and pilot's ability in gusty crosswind conditions with the possibility of precip and/or hail being thrown out of the storm. It probably would not have ended well.

Lessons learned:

* XM is invaluable for identifying rapid changes in weather like pop-up TS
* However, you need to occasionally zoom out on the XM to look for changes like building TS that might affect your route of flight as well as changes in the weather at your destination (in this case, METARS at EAR).
* Assume TS can pop up anywhere on the plains during spring, summer and fall. None of the forecasts had any mention of TS along our route.
* Prepare Plan B at the first sign of trouble.
* If you have a pilot in the right seat, use them to go over your options.
* Trust your personal minimums (as a 100hr pilot, they are highly valuable).

TODR

You guys remember this picture on the first post of this thread. Well, I was on flightaware a few minutes ago and what this looks a lot more like what I saw. The old picture is no longer there. Based on this picture, does it look like I stayed the heck away from all that nasty stuff?!?!?

What's there now.....


What used to be there.......

Webb said:

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Webb said:

You guys remember this picture on the first post of this thread. Well, I was on flightaware a few minutes ago and what this looks a lot more like what I saw. The old picture is no longer there. Based on this picture, does it look like I stayed the heck away from all that nasty stuff?!?!?

What's there now.....

What used to be there.......

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What was your position where that screen shot was taken? Needless to say, it is still to close for my comfort. I would just land and wait it out and stay a night if I have to.

When you go to a flight aware track, what you are seeing is current weather, not what was thee when the flight was in progress.

rule of thumb

Looks like you stayed clear. Which is the main thing.
In general I try to deviate upwind of TS's. Hail can be encountered downwind, in clear air as much as the winds aloft will carry it (could be upwards of 80 miles depending on strength of storm).

If I saw this scenario prior to takeoff. I would delay to let the system move eastward and travel to the west. The route you chose pushed you toward the busy arrival corridors for KATL. Once you chose this path, the speed of the storm determined your deviation path.

The time spent delaying would offset the wide flight path and fuel used to circumvent the line of wx.

Not judging here, just food for thought.

Bryan

sailplane pilots perspective different

Its funny how different the perspective is from a sailplane pilot that very frequently runs the fronts of thunderstorms. Thats where the lift is fantastic, cruising speeds are very high ( 100+ kts).
The back side is cold dead air with no sun, a for-sure land-out.
Sailplane pilot's rule of thumb, to run a storm safely, you must be at least half the cloudbase height up as you approach it. If you can't do that, run further out in front until you can climb high enough to safely engage.

Of course, all this is for nice T-storms that are 10-50 miles across. Sometimes MAYBE 75 miles. I don't think I'd want to fly near one that is the size of most states! Soaring this thing would be equivalent to the surfers that go to the pipeline and surf 50 ft waves. Too dangerous for mortals.