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Santa Maria Weather Seminar: Revision

Santa Maria Weather Seminar
Last updated by XC Triker

Categories: Training / Learning to Fly a Trike, Safety, Weather

I went to the FAA-Wings weather seminar tonight and here are some highlights:

Of the different types of accidents pilots get into, accidents involving weather issues ARE THE MOST LIKELY TO KILL YOU.  ie, don't temp Mother Nature, she will win.

 

Of Weather Accidents:

  1. About 15% are related to icing
  2. 75% are due to VFR flight into IMC (instrument conditions)-  ie flying into CumuloGranite, scud running.

           Refer again to above about weather most likely to kill you, so Scud Running not good.

           When scud running in low visibility, refer also to Jeff's page on PowerLines (200' tall)

 

What's the difference between "Fog: and "Mist"

  • "Mist" is low cloud with visibility > 1/2 mile
  • "Fog" is low cloud with visibility < 1/2 mile

There are only 88 weather balloons launched daily in the US, and Santa Maria is very lucky to have Vandenberg AFB right next to us, so we get very accurate temp, humidity and winds aloft from that balloon each day.

Additionally, Santa Maria is very predictable (usually)- so much so that they are the MOST accurate in the US at predicting conditions at SM.  Not so good at predicting conditions at Santa Barbara (due to the Catalina Eddy, etc (wind howling down California and spinning/eddying where the coastline turns inland at SB, causing a big whirlpool of backflow centered on Catalina)).

Santa Maria usually does about what it did the day before (so, maybe that's why I find it very useful to guess what tomorrows weather is more likely to do, based on what it did today)-- they then make minor adjustments for changes in temps and pressures to estimate the times of burn-off, etc.

Irrigating the farms around the airport adds moisture creating more fog than expected- pockets of fog near the farms when other non-irrigated land nearby will not be foggy.

PIREPs really help the forecasters get the weather right-- especially the estimated time that clouds/fog will burn off.  The reason is that the forecasters know most all the variables, but they don't know the TOPS of the clouds-  if you give them a PIREP, then then know the base and tops of the clouds, thus the thickness and they can predict much better when it will burn off.