We had been doing pretty well, I met up with an old Friend down South for Dinner a week ago in the evening but most days have gone from sunny to stormy.
The forecast going into the weekend was not good with rain early both days, especially today. We launched Friday AM and had a nice run until the Southern end of lake Okeechobee. There was a pretty good storm parked there. The controllers were good and gave me a good deviation around it. It looked particularly dark and angry and as we came around the back we saw a pretty large fire. Not sure if it was coincidence or the rising air from the fire got the storm going.
The rest of the flight went smoothly but there was a good bit of rain to dodge. The controller also sequenced us behind much slower traffic. We were moving about 140 knots and they were doing 60-80. This means we were catching up a mile a minute or better. When you are only 2 miles in trail, this gets your attention.
Luckily we can slow too and once the gear and flaps are out can easily fly 80 knots. We did and we were soon parked and tied down.
We started our Miami adventure getting Cuban food at Havana Harry's, then I finally got to see Rachel's pad, the girls shopped, we strolled Coconut Grove, had dinner on the bay at Montey's and finally grabbed Ice Cream at Chill-N Nitrogen Ice Cream. They use liquid N2 to freeze your specified cream and mix ins on demand. The picture above is the Grove Playhouse. I used to see Rocky Horror here at midnight. It is a landmark now but seems much less exciting than xx years ago (xx is not a typo, redaction)
This morning we awoke to showers moving in from the Atlantic. Also the forecast was for Florida to have storms across the state by early afternoon. It did not disappoint by the way. Rachel was our Uber back to the airport so we called her a bit early and were on our way. The early storms had blown out and there was a clear spot to depart but still rain to dodge.
Leaving Miami they always send you West to climb above the Fort Lauderdale arrivals before sending you North. Usually I grumble about this as it is out of the way. Today I was happy as it kept us West of the action.
Once 50 miles North we were in clear skies and cruising towards home. The radar started to paint a line of storms North of town but we were faster and arrived in plenty of time. As we continued North, the middle of the state started to show some action behind us.
As I write this St. Augustine to Melbourne is pretty much impassible. So our planning worked out well.
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