In late June 2020, a 40-year-old oil industry entrepreneur and executive left David Wayne Hooks Memorial (KDWH) near Houston alone in his Saratoga. Helped by a tailwind, he arrived over his destination—a private strip 90 miles to the northeast—36 minutes later.
It was about 1 o’clock in the morning. The air on the surface was warm and humid. If he checked the weather—there was no evidence that he did—he would have expected to find widespread but patchy cloudiness over the route of flight and at the destination. In some places clouds were broken or scattered with tops at 3,000. Elsewhere buildups climbed into the flight levels. Ceilings and visibilities under the clouds were good, at worst 700 feet and 5 miles. The temperature and the dew point were only 3 degrees apart, however, and there was a slightly increased risk of fog formation owing to, of all things, particulate pollution from dust blown in from the Sahara.
