FLYING Magazine News Pilot Proficiency Weather

How to Decipher Flight-Level Weather

Here are some tips for finding the smoothest air to fly in.

Friday, November 01, 2024 at 09:32 AM ET

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Most pilots have access to a ton of weather guidance, but if you are routinely flying in the flight levels, here’s one more product to add to your list—constant pressure charts. [iStock]

Key Takeaways:

Constant pressure charts are essential for pilots flying at higher altitudes, providing a comprehensive "big weather picture" of conditions aloft (including wind components and potential turbulence) that surface charts do not offer.
These charts depict geopotential height for a single pressure level (e.g., 500 mb), where lower heights (troughs) indicate colder, denser air and often adverse weather like turbulence or icing, while higher heights (ridges) signify warmer, less dense air and typically fairer conditions.
The 500 mb chart is a key tool for diagnosing weather system intensity and evolution, useful for extended-range forecasting, and helps identify patterns like split-flow or sharp V-shaped meridional flow that indicate potential moderate to severe clear air turbulence due to significant wind shear.

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Understanding the big weather picture is key to making good operational decisions. Most pilots have access to a ton of weather guidance, but if you are routinely flying in the flight levels, here’s one more product to add to your list—constant pressure charts.

Constant pressure charts not only help you with the quantitative aspects of your flight, such as finding the best altitude to minimize your headwind component, but they also help you with a few qualitative aspects, such as minimizing your exposure to uncomfortable clear air turbulence if you know what to look for.

Scott Dennstaedt, Ph.D

Scott resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, and flies regularly throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S. He is a CFI and former NWS meteorologist. Scott is the author of "The Skew-T log (p) and Me: A Primer for Pilots" and the founder of EZWxBrief.