Saturday when we were leaving town, it looked like we might have a significant impact from Dorian. We also figured that by Monday morning we would have more clarity on the storm's path. Well Dorian decided to hang out in the Bahamas for an extended visit. On Sunday night after the wedding we had no idea where Dorian would go but we couldn't rule out a visit.
Not wanting to bring the plane home and have it get clobbered by the storm, we decided to go with our backup plan and run away. The question was where to go? I quickly settled on Tifton, GA. Our friends at the wedding were asking me our destination and when I answered Tifton, I was met with universal scorn. That said there was method to my madness. I wanted to be West of any storm impact, this meant >100 miles from the coast. I also wanted to avoid having the storm between us and home for an extended period. This meant looking West of home.
Location wise, I needed an airport with good facilities, good approaches, nearby hotels and food. When you look Southwest, you don't have a good selection of hotels, unless you go to Tampa but that was really out of the way. Atlanta area was possible but it also kept us farther from home. Tifton, actually had it all. Good approaches, well priced gas, local maintenance, lots of hotels and food. As a bonus, I knew it as I have stopped there many times driving 75. It is also only an hour from Columbia and 45 minutes from home so it only added 30 minutes of travel.
So Monday after the last brunch festivities we headed off to Tifton. Even if we had wanted to leave early to get home, there was some low weather so our mid day departure was pretty set. Travelling to Tifton we could see the weather building at home. Both the radar and my eyes confirmed that avoiding Florida for a bit was a good plan.
We arrived in Tifton to find an airport without a lot of action. We soon secured the plane and went inside to see a notice that they were un-attended for the Holiday. They had left building access though. It is a very nice facility. In addition they have 2 airport cars that you can sign out for short trips. We signed one out, and in the process met one of the airport employees who had come in to help with some of the storm response. He gave us some pointers and sent us on our way.
Though the airport was not hopping, it was being used as a staging area for power repair trucks. We saw rows of them on our arrival and even more when we were leaving.
The car allowed us to move our luggage to the hotel a few minutes down the road, grab some snacks from the local Publix and get ready to shelter in place. Returning the car after an hour we talked to the employee again and since things were slow, he said we could keep the car overnight. Yes I picked well.
This facilitated us getting a nice dinner. After dinner the storm updates looked like our hangar would be safe so I went to sleep with the idea to re-evaluate in the morning. Waking up to the 5AM update I was confident that we could go home and that the plane and our persons would be safe.
I completed some work meetings and then headed back to the airport. Since they were on holiday Monday I had them fuel me while we loaded and prepped the plane. There were still some broken low clouds above the field but the en-route weather was mostly marginal VFR or better. I grabbed my clearance by cellphone and was pleasantly surprised when I got my clearance and release all at once.
We were quickly climbing to 7000 for the 45 minute ride home. We did have 20 knots of wind on the nose heading into the storm and there were some light rain showers hanging around Jacksonville.
It was pretty cool to zoom out our data link radar and see the Hurricane far far out. Approaching home we started to see some buildups but they were not very tall. The controllers were on their A game and worked with us to avoid anything that looked ominous. We ended up taking the GPS 14 approach starting over Jacksonville International.
We slid through the clouds for a few minutes and broke out around 1800 with the Dames point Bridge in sight. The airport soon appeared as we descended on the LPV approach. The winds were 20+ knots from the North-East so we circled to 5. The tower had closed for the storm so this was the first time I had come in with the field uncontrolled during the day. With the good weather below the clouds, I cancelled with Jacksonville and soon we were rolling out after a smooth touch down.
Door to door it was about 2 hours to make the return. Did we have to run away? No but it was the cautious move. It was sort of fun to just take a somewhat random trip for a day but glad to be home and now hunkering down for a rainy, windy, Wednesday.
Not wanting to bring the plane home and have it get clobbered by the storm, we decided to go with our backup plan and run away. The question was where to go? I quickly settled on Tifton, GA. Our friends at the wedding were asking me our destination and when I answered Tifton, I was met with universal scorn. That said there was method to my madness. I wanted to be West of any storm impact, this meant >100 miles from the coast. I also wanted to avoid having the storm between us and home for an extended period. This meant looking West of home.
Location wise, I needed an airport with good facilities, good approaches, nearby hotels and food. When you look Southwest, you don't have a good selection of hotels, unless you go to Tampa but that was really out of the way. Atlanta area was possible but it also kept us farther from home. Tifton, actually had it all. Good approaches, well priced gas, local maintenance, lots of hotels and food. As a bonus, I knew it as I have stopped there many times driving 75. It is also only an hour from Columbia and 45 minutes from home so it only added 30 minutes of travel.
So Monday after the last brunch festivities we headed off to Tifton. Even if we had wanted to leave early to get home, there was some low weather so our mid day departure was pretty set. Travelling to Tifton we could see the weather building at home. Both the radar and my eyes confirmed that avoiding Florida for a bit was a good plan.
We arrived in Tifton to find an airport without a lot of action. We soon secured the plane and went inside to see a notice that they were un-attended for the Holiday. They had left building access though. It is a very nice facility. In addition they have 2 airport cars that you can sign out for short trips. We signed one out, and in the process met one of the airport employees who had come in to help with some of the storm response. He gave us some pointers and sent us on our way.
Though the airport was not hopping, it was being used as a staging area for power repair trucks. We saw rows of them on our arrival and even more when we were leaving.
The car allowed us to move our luggage to the hotel a few minutes down the road, grab some snacks from the local Publix and get ready to shelter in place. Returning the car after an hour we talked to the employee again and since things were slow, he said we could keep the car overnight. Yes I picked well.
This facilitated us getting a nice dinner. After dinner the storm updates looked like our hangar would be safe so I went to sleep with the idea to re-evaluate in the morning. Waking up to the 5AM update I was confident that we could go home and that the plane and our persons would be safe.
I completed some work meetings and then headed back to the airport. Since they were on holiday Monday I had them fuel me while we loaded and prepped the plane. There were still some broken low clouds above the field but the en-route weather was mostly marginal VFR or better. I grabbed my clearance by cellphone and was pleasantly surprised when I got my clearance and release all at once.
We were quickly climbing to 7000 for the 45 minute ride home. We did have 20 knots of wind on the nose heading into the storm and there were some light rain showers hanging around Jacksonville.
It was pretty cool to zoom out our data link radar and see the Hurricane far far out. Approaching home we started to see some buildups but they were not very tall. The controllers were on their A game and worked with us to avoid anything that looked ominous. We ended up taking the GPS 14 approach starting over Jacksonville International.
We slid through the clouds for a few minutes and broke out around 1800 with the Dames point Bridge in sight. The airport soon appeared as we descended on the LPV approach. The winds were 20+ knots from the North-East so we circled to 5. The tower had closed for the storm so this was the first time I had come in with the field uncontrolled during the day. With the good weather below the clouds, I cancelled with Jacksonville and soon we were rolling out after a smooth touch down.
Door to door it was about 2 hours to make the return. Did we have to run away? No but it was the cautious move. It was sort of fun to just take a somewhat random trip for a day but glad to be home and now hunkering down for a rainy, windy, Wednesday.
