About 60 miles out, a surprise. Georgetown, Delaware, reports a ceiling of 200 feet and visibility of a mile. This comes to us via the automated surface observation system (ASOS) and is below minimums for all approaches to the airport. We’re already descending, talking to Washington Center, carrying my daughter, her husband and their two young boys back home. I turn and look back at the four of them and my wife, all blissfully arranged in the comfortable seats of our Cheyenne. The nearest available forecasts, for Dover and Salisbury, Maryland, were way better than this. It looks like we might end up at one of these airports. Or maybe not, for a quick check of the metars on the Avidyne EX500 shows that these airports are at or close to minimums, too. Whatever is causing the low weather at Georgetown is not a local phenomenon and is an unexpected development throughout the area.
I shed the headset for a minute and tell my wife, Cathy, that the weather is well below forecast and that we might end up somewhere other than Georgetown, KGED. Too bad, as this first-rate field sits just a mile from the kids’ architecturally stunning and welcoming home. Though a diversion is unusual and a nuisance sometimes, it is more than that with two little boys who have been very patient but do have their feeding and napping schedules. Thank goodness their mother has been flying in general aviation airplanes since she was a week old and the unpredictability attendant to weather flying is well known to her.
