“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
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
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