Scott Dennstaedt, PhD

I appreciate all of the kind words. I will definitely be enjoying my retirement...maybe too much.

I will be formally retiring at the end of 2026. It’s hard to believe I’ve spent more than 45 years in the weather business, and nearly 30 of those years as a flight instructor. Weather and aviation have shaped so much of my life—my work, my friendships, and a whole lot of memorable days. Now it’s time to turn the page. I’m looking forward to slowing the pace, spending more time with my grandkids, and—over the next couple of decades—traveling to interesting places around the world with my wife. I have to say it out loud or it’ll never happen. So…what does retirement look like for me? Mostly, it looks like making room for new adventures and gently setting weather and aviation to the side. I’ve shared what I can, and I don’t think I have much more weather wisdom left to impart to the aviation world. It feels like the right time to step out of the light and let the next generation take it from here. That said, I’m not disappearing overnight. I still plan to manage and maintain my EZWxBrief progressive web app for at least a few more years. I’d hate to shut it down while so many long-time aviation friends still rely on it daily for preflight planning. I will, however, be ending my 1-on-1 online training at the end of this year—my day-to-day volunteer activities won’t leave me with the kind of open schedule that training requires. You also won’t see me at aviation events like AirVenture or SUN ’n FUN as a vendor or forum speaker (including this year). Instead, I’d like to go purely for the joy of it—and maybe take my grandkids once or twice so they can experience the magic. Beyond that, I don’t plan to take on additional speaking engagements or hold classes past 2026. I’ve truly loved teaching pilots at every experience level about weather, but it’s time to pass the torch. I do plan to keep writing. I’ll continue to provide occasional content to various aviation magazines, and I’ll keep selling my two books and the Weather Essentials recorded classes. That should keep me connected to the aviation world—just at a comfortable distance—for a little while longer. And as for the forums… I’ll likely stop posting and reading most of them (at least the ones that haven’t banned me). But I’ll still be around, and I expect I’ll be answering the occasional email for the foreseeable future. Thank you to everyone who’s been part of this journey with me. It’s meant more than I can say.

Likely the biggest impact was their engineering team.

I worked for FF for 2.5 years, but I have using GP since 2017. Based on my sources, I think 40-50% is an overstatement. The affected employees are evidently receiving severance packages, benefits and transition resources.

I have been a contributing editor for FLYING magazine for a little over three years now. In that time for editor-in-chief I have have seen Julie Boatman fired; she was replaced by Randy Bolinger who was subsequently fired. They just replaced him with Jessica Ambats last month. I know they are making some drastic changes over the next few issues. I've submitted a couple of articles and they have been bumped to later issues. Hard to know what is going on.

I have been using GP for quite some time now and while I have some gripes about the weather elements, I find that the features are perfect for what I need.

Well, you can still read all of my articles in FLYING since they are eventually posted online.

Our good friends at SiriusXM Aviation are sponsoring a 60-minute free webinar on Tuesday, May 13th at 7 pm EDT. I will be providing the answers to frequently asked questions about aviation weather. If you are interested in attending, please register here. If you want to submit a question about aviation weather, please send it to aviation.support@siriusxm.com. Lastly, please spread the word! Hope to see you there.

Thanks Paul for the shout out! Most of the heavyweight apps and other websites out there just throw data at you to see what sticks. This makes it very cumbersome for pilots that have a difficult time consuming this weather guidance. I didn't want to take that approach and felt it was necessary to develop at tool that identifies and quantifies personal risk...since that's the ultimate goal when we are doing our briefings. Here's a video that shows how I do a preflight planning session.

Yep, it only takes one mistake to ruin your day.

What I like about this as well...is that you caught your three mistakes. The issue occurs when you don't.

For those interested in personal weather mins, I'll be doing a presentation at SUN 'n FUN on Thursday, April 3rd at 10 a.m. in room CFAA-01. This will also cover how I've integrated personal weather mins into my progressive web app which is designed to identify and quantify personal risk for a route. Hope to see you there! Also, check out this article from FLYING magazine that I wrote last year about personal weather mins.

It’s actually been in the works for nearly two decades as I discussed in my blog… https://www.avwxtraining.com/post/the-end-of-airmets-finally

Just be very careful here. WS is scientifically invalid especially as it relates to clouds. It uses a very rudimentary RH scheme for clouds using the GFS model which is not a convective-allowing model. In my app I used a concept called cloud fractions that does extremely well by blending together multiple forecast models (that are convective-allowing) to produce the vertical route profile that is scientifically valid.

I developed a rudimentary sounding about six years ago. I do a lot of litigation support and weather forensics for wrongful death law suits and needed a way to build soundings from archived model forecasts. So, I am pulling this into my app and adding a few features that you won't find anywhere else. I am not a fan of Windy. They have everything based on single models and that's just not the right approach in my opinion. My app blends multiple models and provides a much more consistent forecast. Also, their Skew-T (last time I looked at it) doesn't show the various indices that I normally use. They also only provide the surface-based parcel and don't give you any info about the most unstable or mixed layer parcel.