Weather Posts

Pursuing my schooling on computer-aided flight plans, usually generated by an electronic flight bag (EFB—see Are You Current with the New Airman Certification Standards? for my ACS motivation), has led me to an FAA advisory circular, Use of Flight D…

With climate change continuing the slow and steady march to ever warmer records, 2023 set a new record. (I can hear 2024 softly asking us to hold its beer.) “After seeing the 2023 climate analysis, I have to pause and say that the findings are…

Beyond worrying about the heating bill and bundling up for the sub-zero trek to the mail box, reports about how much of America has been dealing with the polar waterfall has stimulated an unexpected question: Given the reality that cold weather quic…

Like many aviators, I’m a weather geek. The internet has sustained this addiction, and since 2002, The National Weather Services Aviation Weather Center has been the one weather product I cannot do without. And it will become more potent next …

If you keep reading the Aviation Weather Handbook, FAA-H-8083-28, you’ll learn that space weather reports are officially known at the Space Weather Advisory in chapter 26.7. It is a newcomer to the universe of meteorology. The International Ci…

Right after pounding the final words of Reading the Weather into my computer, I opened the Aviation Weather Handbook, FAA-H-8083-28 and scrolled to Chapter 23. At first glance, space weather stands tall as a meteorological oxymoron. How can weather—…

It is that time of year when Mother Nature is in a gray and gloomy mood that sucks the Vitamin D out of your soul. The Scots, who know something about unpleasant weather, have a word for it—dreich—that beat glaikit, scunnered, and shoogle as the mos…

It seems a safe assumption that the only people who have not yet seen the spectrum of aviation damage wrought by Hurricane Ian are those have endured its torments and await reconnection to their electrical and data grids. The rest of us have witness…

In early April, the New York Times reported that the National Weather Service has stopped launching weather balloons from nine of its 101 stations in the US and Caribbean because they don’t have enough helium to make the balloons lighter than …

Researching the 75th anniversary of Project Thunderstorm, conducted at the U.S. Air Force’s All-Weather Flying Center in Wilmington, Ohio, from May to September, 1947, I admired the courage of the volunteer pilots, weather observers, and airbo…

When preparing for a flight, it would be a safe assumption that pilots never consider their dominant learning style when ferreting out the information for their preflight weather briefing. Time, technology, and the recently published Advisory Circul…

Mother Nature’s springtime blizzard that dumped more than a foot of snow over an appetizer of freezing rain and ice encouraged me to spend the weekend indoors. Searching for some clue of how many more courses this banquet of wind and snow she …