Thunderstorms

 I knew that there would be a chance of thunderstorms heading home from Beaufort.  The forecast was for widely scatter rain around home but nothing in South Carolina.  That was really wrong.  Getting the plane ready I could see a storm off the end of the runway and the radar showed several en-route.  I only had 2.5 hours of gas left so I had decided to make a quick stop in Georgia for gas before heading South into the building rain.  The storm below was off the departure end, I had already turned a bit left so as to avoid it.  

The initial flight over to Baxely, GA was easy.  There was some rain but it was widely scattered and easy to avoid.  I soon had my tanks topped which gave me over 8 hours of endurance (10 if I go really slow) so I was ready to try to get home.  Lots of gas means lots of choices.  The direct route was blocked by a line of storms stretching about 100 miles. This meant meant going around the top or bottom.  The storms were moving North but the Southerly route added a lot of miles so I chose the top and once off the ground checked in with center.  

Center was busy keeping everyone safe but not a lot of planes out.  I had debated going back VFR but wanted to climb up where I could hopefully see better and figured that it might be hard to stay VFR.  Checking in with center I was given my clearance and we agreed on a plan.  I headed East and started watching the weather.  I have decided that I like my active radar on my main screen with the XM weather on the primary GPS.  This way I can compare the two.  I was mostly watching the radar out to 40 miles with a +4 tilt.  This painted the weather well without ground clutter.  It quickly became apparent why I am getting to really like my radar.  The XM and live showed similar pictures but the XM was offset South.  The storms were moving North and while it was a good big picture, it was old and deceptive.

Getting near the coast I found a nice alley between the clouds and center was very accomodating on headings.  Combining my eyes with the live scan, I made my way through the building weather without getting wet.  Later I did get some rain flying under some light precip.  I was not in the clouds then, just raindrops falling on my plane.  Once crossing through the line and flying over to the coast I was in the clear with clouds above.  It looked like the afternoon sea breeze was keeping the weather inland.

Getting close to home things looked complicated.  The XM showed a storm on the airport but the radar showed that only light rain was falling.  I could see some heavy precip blocking about 180 degrees of the sky but I had a clear escape route if things did not continue as planned.  The last 5 miles were wet with a steady light rain culminating in a touchdown on a very wet runway.  The plus side was a perfectly smooth landing.  I did go back to the plane today and wiped off the dirt I knew the water had flung under the plane.  It was not as bad as I expected.

Overall, the radar gave me that extra advantage which let me navigate around some serious weather.  While I could have probably made it in my last plane, not sure I would have tried it because there were several times where I could not clearly see ahead and would have likely landed to wait it out.  The radar can't get you everywhere and you still can't go through heavy weather.  It does help you see and avoid it though.