Winter storms approach southern California from the Gulf of Alaska, the low center descending off the Pacific coast and then swinging inland to spend itself in Arizona and New Mexico. When the low is abeam Los Angeles southwest winds race across the coastal plain, leap over the San Gabriel Mountains and tumble head over heels, like frolicking children, into the desert beyond. Like frolicking children, they sometimes break things.
There was such a storm on the last day of winter in 2011. A Cessna P210N Silver Eagle — a pressurized 210 fitted with a Rolls-Royce turbine engine — left Santa Ana’s John Wayne Airport around noon bound for Henderson, Nevada, with the pilot and her two young children aboard. The pilot had self-briefed — she liked to use aviationweather.gov — and had filed an IFR flight plan with a cruising altitude of 15,000 feet, an estimated time en route of 1:15, and three hours of fuel aboard.
