Weather

Your flight is short—just over an hour. What could happen? A lot. Solid clouds can develop on the way and hunker down into low bases by the time you descend for the destination. If it’s misty underneath, visibility likes to swing from marginal to none. Well, that’s why missed approaches and alternates exist. Meanwhile, it […]

Summer is the ideal time to take the plane out and visit fly-ins, see some old friends, and seek out the hundred-dollar hamburger. It’s easy to fall into the mindset that wintertime hazards are gone, the turbulent weather of spring is over, and winds are light and variable. Mostly true, but there are still problems […]

Rain showers and thunderstorms are one and the same from a pilot’s perspective.

Convection is something you probably deal with every day as a pilot, whether you’re aware of it or not. When you hear the word “convection” you might be thinking of a cumulus cloud or maybe the lively bubbling in a pot of boiling pasta. But the exact definition of convection is the spontaneous release of […]

From year to year there may be a stark contrast in where severe weather strikes, especially thunderstorms that produce tornadoes.

Since I began this column over 10 years ago, I’ve strived to write as though you’re with me in the weather operations center, looking over my shoulder and seeing things from my perspective. Since my entire life after high school has revolved around meteorology, it’s always seemed to me that there’s no better way to […]

Hundreds of flights were canceled after a storm dropping more than 25 inches of rain prompted the airport to temporarily shut down operations.

Winter and airframe icing are like peanut butter and jelly; it’s hard to imagine one without the other.

Temperature inversions are quite common in the lower troposphere and are created by several different atmospheric processes.

Just 40 years ago, a pilot’s only real access to live radar data was in the cockpit of a sophisticated multi-engine aircraft. But thanks to rapid advances in technology and computer networks, anybody carrying a smartphone has access to nearly all of the data from the federal government’s $3 billion radar network. Add ADS-B In […]