Weather to go

One of the harder aspects of flying is managing the weather.  Now you can't change the weather but you can decide whether to participate in it or watch it from the ground.  Yesterday, I had planned a flight to Atlanta.  I was watching the weather during the week and as things unfolded it became apparent that weather was going to be a problem.  One thing you learn early is that it is not all that predictable.  This day the predictions were close. I woke up and the radar looked like this.

So this was not a pretty picture but when you go 200 mph, you can often just go around stuff.  What was concerning as well was those colored dots.  Green and Blue indicate visual conditions.  Red is instrument and magenta is low instrument conditions.  Thus not only would we be looking at dodging storms but we might be solid in the weather which makes it harder to see things building around you.

As you can see as the day wore on it was not getting any better.  We cancelled the flight and enjoyed the day at home.

Today I woke up with the intention of taking CC for some Eggs Benedict down in Vero Beach.  There is a nice place on the airport.  The forecast was for good weather all day so when I woke up and the coast was all low instrument weather, I was a bit disappointed.  In this case, I had a good feeling that hitting snooze would fix the problem

Delaying an hour changed the weather picture and we were off at 10:00 instead of 9:00.  Other than a few soft clouds we had great weather heading down.

The late start put us behind the local crowd so we had to wait for a table but eventually we had a nice breakfast/lunch and headed back.  The afternoon forecast was supposed to be a few scattered clouds but we had a bit of un-forecast weather.

Heading North along the coast we started to encounter some bumpy clouds that were building into rain showers.  The controllers were very accommodating and by flying about 2 miles East of our planned course we avoided the rough stuff.  As we came up to Daytona area there was a good size storm building.

Now when I started flying we would watch the weather channel before heading to the airport and that was the last look we had at the radar before launching an hour or two later.  As the years have passed, they put radar displays at airports and then we had cell phones.  Now we get the information sent via data link.  This is pretty good but the information may be several minutes old so it is great for avoiding areas of storms and giving you a heads up as it did today.  It is not great at tactical avoidance as things can change fast.  Today it gave us the heads up and we then used our eyeballs to confirm a safe route around the cell.

We deviated East and came up the coast.  You can see the storm as we passed it.  The picture does not show it well but it looked dark and rainy under there.  With the help of air traffic control, some data and our eyes, we were able to complete the flight safely and have a nice breakfast.