The coming storm

Saturday I awoke to clear skies but when I started looking at the weather, the picture was not so rosy.  There was a line of rain from the Florida/Georgia border to the West Coast North of Tampa.

You can see how nice it looked if you looked the right way.  Holding short for takeoff I could see what was coming.  Regardless the storms were actually moving quite slowly so I decided to go out for a morning flight before the rain.

On departure I had a good preview of the rain.

It was still Sunny downtown and listening to approach, I could hear them still skydiving over at Herlong.

I headed South West parallel to the rain to have a better look.  It made quite a nice picture on the GPS.

I could see the rain showers under the storm front but stayed well clear.

It made for some nice scenery as I worked my way back North East.

JAX was still in the sun too and I got a nice overhead view.

Fernandina was also quite with the ship cutting frames still hanging out.  I guess the ship at Saint Simons is not yet ready to be cut.

I returned before any of the rain started.  I did drop by Safe Harbor for fresh fish and saw lightning in the distance returning to the car.  The storm line sort broke up so the coming storm never really came though we got some sprinkles at the house.  I did see the airport has a new system to mow the grass.  This poor guy was working alone on the weekend.

Hurricane Hunter

We are under a Tropical Storm warning.  Should have rain later today but this morning the sky was blue.

NOAA flies into Hurricanes, I fly near Hurricanes.  When I looked at the weather I could see the main outer band was around Daytona.  There was also a bit of rain over Saint Augustine.  My gut said that it would be building rapidly.

Departing, it was pretty blue.  I quickly climbed over the few clouds.  Originally I was thinking 6500 would keep me on top but later decided 8500 would provide more room.

As I headed South, it looked like I could slide between the rain over St. Augustine.  There were some big holes but I decide to stay to the West where I always had an escape route.

I slid by the close rain but my real target was the big storm.   You can see the storms over St. Augustine were starting to get denser.

Once I cleared the first line, I got a good look ahead.  I had ended up going further West than I initially planned so I had called Jacksonville Approach to confirm the restricted areas over by lake George were cold.  They were and I decided to head for over the lake.

This is the leading mass of the storm.  Pretty sure we will get some of this rain later today.  Oddly it was lots of rain but not much lightning.  I was watching the various displays and my lightning detector.  It was much quieter than I had expected.

I took a panorama view as well as the GPS display with all the pretty colors.  Even without lightning and the storms not being that tall, I was giving them the respect they deserved and keeping my distance, about 30 nautical miles.

This is lake George, it was a nice day when I was there.  Expecting it to deteriorate a bit.

I had seen the storm and now it was time to head back.  The rain had built over Saint Augustine and the clouds were thicker the entire way back.  This is the back side of the leading line.

I had thought ahead and filed an IFR plan just in case.  I requested it from JAX once I was in a position to go direct home without getting too close to the storms.

I was cleared down to 6000 and direct home.  This was the picture ahead, you can see the junk on the right.

Nice smooth air for the ride home and I could see the rain off to my right.

Why the IFR?  It was 2500 bases and not that dense so I could have stayed VFR.  Well it is just easier and sort of fun to zip through the clouds rather than stressing about finding a legal hole and having to detour.  Here I got to fly through a cloud tunnel.

Bases were 2500 so I was soon underneath with the field in sight.  I was transferred to tower and made a nice landing on 5.  Spent some time cleaning the hangar and now plane is away and safe from the approaching rain.