One of the hardest go no decisions is when the weather isn't really that bad but it's not that good. We have been looking forward to a trip up North for quite some time. Initially it looked like the weather was going to cooperate but as it got closer that changed. Departure day the entire Eastern Seaboard was low IFR including our first fuel stop and second. This was not a deal breaker as it was supposed to clear and I was pretty confident it would open up by mid day.
Our destination was the issue, forecasts were for the afternoon ranged from marginal VFR to low IFR. Four things concerned me. The first stop might not clear requiring a divert and delay us. Our destinantion weather might hold but the later it got, the worse it would be and it would stay bad for at least 36 hours. There were no close easy alternates. The final issue was the uncertainty. At 7 AM I needed to make a call about what was happenning at 3 PM, 7 hours away.
Yes the plane is very capable, I have flown 10 approaches in the last 60 days, 7 in actual so it was less about what we could do and more about what was prudent. I made the call to delay. So what happenned, our first stop cleared just in time, our second had storms during our arrival, not sure how that would have changed things and the destination stayed high enough to get in. That said it then got hammered. This left us planning to leave Friday with excellent weather across our entire route.
Then the hurricanes showed up. While we build flexibility into our schedule we anted to be able to be back by Tuesday and the predicted influence of what will be Imelda made our chances look bleak. So today we scrubbed the trip until a later date when we had time and good weather.
I had a plane ready to go so we deciced to take a quick flight and train on the radar some more. Big storms were out West so we filed IFR to Lake City and back. Everything worked as planned and we got some nice cloud time, the controllers were friendly and let us deviate around the bad as in bumpy stuff.
We also saw some but heavy rain coming from short clouds. I've said it before, just because the tops are less than 15,000, it still doesn't mean you want to take the ride. On the way out we had some litttle yellow cells on the XM display but as we approached they were much more serious according to the omboard radar. We circumnavigated the area and on our return path they were even more intense but still showing OK on the XM.
As I was writing this, the potential storm Imelda just got names potential cyclone 9. The official cone has it moving slower but still looks like a Tuesday return was still not in the cards. It's always hard to scrap a trip you have been planning and looking forward to especially when you have a seriously capble airplane and you practice a lot. That said, we have done it before and we are still here to do it again.
