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IFR through Towering Cumbulus


crxcte

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49 minutes ago, cliffy said:

OK I'll relate a story about weather at night, in the hopes that if the crap ever hits the fan someone might find it useful to save their bacon.

Flying from ICT to SLC on night in a 737, as we passed DEN and entered the usual front range weather stuff (towering Q and flash bulbs, the RADAR took a dump. Nothing, nada, zilch. Here we are in the middle of it and we lose our "eyes" to the weather at night, IMC. Checked the usual, CBs, recycle, nothing. 

I fell back to a flight I had in a DC-3 many decades before when we didn't have RADAR and we encountered T storms coming out of Gallup, NM at night. I watched and learned as the old, veteran, DC-3 Captain flew around all the T storms.

In the 737, I followed his lead and turned the cockpit lights down low, rested my chin on the glare shield and watched out the window.  I had the copilot flying to my directions. ATC gave us 30 either side of course and as I saw a flash say 10 left of course I had the F/O turn 5 or 10 more right. As we passed that one I was looking ahead where the next flashes were grouped (these were just illuminating the IMC weather and not the bright electrical discharge). The next one might be dead ahead so I'd have him turn 20 left and so on. In about 70  miles we broke out into the clear on the west side.  Never hit a bump!

Although I don't recommend it as a usual practice, you can do pretty good (at night) this way if you have to fall back to basics and you are jammed into a corner. Remember, the guys that flew the Hump in WWII didn't have RADAR either, yet somehow they avoided the cells back then also!

As we broke into the clear my F/O said, "GEE, I've never seen anything like that before". I responded, "I learned that from am old DC-3 Captain a long time ago. Remember it and it might save your butt someday". 

Cliffy, I look forward to any stories you want to tell!

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9 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

If you tune your ADF to a blank channel, the needle will usually point at lightning strikes.

But, alas, we all took them out a few years ago....

Never heard that before and still have mine installed in the TA (and it works :)).  I'm not in a rush to find out, but will keep that in mind if push comes to shove one day and I've totally screwed up my planning. 

Brian

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Robert Bucks autobiography has a chapter on this work during WWII flying I want to say a B24 into Thunder cells.  Mind you they went to the equator to get the real monster cells, not the pansy ones we have in the US.  

His weather book is the real deal, great read up there with Kushner.  

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21 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

I was wondering if anyone was going to talk about the colors. 

When I first started flying there were still a lot of WWII pilots hanging out at the airport. I asked an old P51 pilot what they did about thunderstorms. He said he would bite on his pencil to keep from chipping his teeth. He said they would fly right through them, after all there were no Germans in the thunderstorms. He feared the Germans more than the storms.

He told me that you know you are in a storm when you see the colors. When I was in that storm in OK my whole world turned yellow then green then blue. It would have been very cool if I didn't think I was going to die! It must be some sort of rainbow effect going on. 

I didn't realize the doppler radar pics reflected actual colors.  :) 

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Timely thread.

I flew IFR today, filed at 6K and as I leveled off I was at the tops, only about 3,000 ft thick and smooth ride. Suddenly the smooth tops became rolling tops were building so I climbed ot 8K and couldn’t outclimb it. The flight was only 35min total and by the time it got rough I was closer to destination than any other airport so we carried on and asked for lower which did give a better ride. Forecast was for tops at 8K, no rain on ADSB weather, but like ice and other things forecasts are only forecasts, and it is where you find it. Occasionally I’d break out and tops looked over 12K and shap boiling edges. Anyway, we got bounced around pretty good and hit my head a couple of times and ended up hand flying. Wife didn’t like it, but didn’t complain either. Basically I’d say we flew thru a small embedded towering cumulus and by the time we landed you could see the showers on the Aviationweather.gov radar. Worst part only lasted about 5 min but it sure got my attention. 

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2 hours ago, Bartman said:

Timely thread.

I flew IFR today, filed at 6K and as I leveled off I was at the tops, only about 3,000 ft thick and smooth ride. Suddenly the smooth tops became rolling tops were building so I climbed ot 8K and couldn’t outclimb it. The flight was only 35min total and by the time it got rough I was closer to destination than any other airport so we carried on and asked for lower which did give a better ride. Forecast was for tops at 8K, no rain on ADSB weather, but like ice and other things forecasts are only forecasts, and it is where you find it. Occasionally I’d break out and tops looked over 12K and shap boiling edges. Anyway, we got bounced around pretty good and hit my head a couple of times and ended up hand flying. Wife didn’t like it, but didn’t complain either. Basically I’d say we flew thru a small embedded towering cumulus and by the time we landed you could see the showers on the Aviationweather.gov radar. Worst part only lasted about 5 min but it sure got my attention. 

In retrospect, were there any weather products/indicators that could have helped you avoid this (short of not flying)?  By the book in the seat next to you standard, would you have considered this mild, moderate, severe?  After my little run in with a turbulent convective cloud column last week, I've become averse to entering any kind of non-stratus cloud.  But I also don't want to limit my flying in a way that is overly restrictive either.

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Unfortunately, the only way (that I am aware of) to learn about flying, or not flying, in weather is to push your comfort envelope. And worse, a very dangerous way to fly in weather is to push your comfort envelope too much. Figuring how much is too much is very difficult.

I found it not very helpful to fly with an instructor in this regard. Only when I was responsible for  making those decisions did I make much headway in learning. I pushed my limits very slowly, and it seems to have worked out OK. But it is a pretty slow process.

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I’ve seen some weird cumulus clouds at low altitude.  One I recall was over West Virginia.   Extreme precip per ATC.  You could see the microburst spewing out from it.  I was cruising at maybe 9k and the tips were not taller than me. I was dumbfounded that a little cloud could hold that much water.

Another time I was flying from PIT to BOS 9k north of EWR and was getting vectored for both weather and the arrivals.  I got slotted just south of this nasty looking greenish gray copper colored cloud and I was above the tops but only south of it by a couple of miles.  It was losely independent from a storm cell further to the north by several miles. It was lighting up with cloud to cloud.   Perhaps from the momma cell but enough for me to want to be out of there pronto.   

In coastal NC we often have convective (ie lightening present) cells that are green on nexrad with tops in the high teens or low 20s.  They all don’t need to grow to FL360 to be significant.  

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On 7/5/2019 at 6:25 PM, apenney said:

 

image.thumb.png.762dfc085fc044a8541e6a104d71b375.png

 

I'll say there is nothing in this picture that can hurt you or your Mooney. I think it's actually fun to fly through the tops of those CU's. These tops are at about 14,000 ft as you said and so don't qualify as "towering cumulous". They can be bumpy but not to worry.

If the tops are 30,000 or 40,000 and you're flying through the middle of them at 12,000, you might get hurt. Don't do that. But the clouds in this picture won't hurt you. 

Go fly, get the experience, learn. I like what @DonMuncy said. Go slowly and get the experience.

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8 hours ago, apenney said:

In retrospect, were there any weather products/indicators that could have helped you avoid this (short of not flying)?  By the book in the seat next to you standard, would you have considered this mild, moderate, severe?  After my little run in with a turbulent convective cloud column last week, I've become averse to entering any kind of non-stratus cloud.  But I also don't want to limit my flying in a way that is overly restrictive either.

Sure, there was a convective SIGMET but not “active” until well after my arrival time and I would categorize this as mild and borderline moderate turbulence.  I’ve been flying IFR for about eight years now and I don’t mind flying through the small Cumulus, but sometimes it’s uncomfortable but if you’re going to fly an approach in my area then most likely you’re going to fly through some small stuff because Approach maneuvering altitudes will put you right in the middle of it. The point of the post was despite forecast for tops at 6-8K, you get what you get. I was flying  from the Tennessee Valley which is relatively flat, then over the mountains to the north. Like others said you see this in the mountains and my experiences told me to expect it because  if the winds are perpendicular to the mountain you do get lifting and higher clouds, even if they’re only 4000 feet.  Even if the tops are not all that high you can still see some pretty impressive stuff  in the Appalachian Mountains  that I will not fly through despite the tops being on around 8 or 10. 

Enjoy the instrument rating, get some experience your own flights and discussion with others, and fly safe.   

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