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Santa Maria Weather Seminar
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:
- About 15% are related to icing
- 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.
Comments
Xc please explain cumulu granite and scud running?
CumuloGranite is a type of low cloud that looks soft like you should be able to pass right through but actually has a mountain inside it. Most commonly found when flying VFR accidentally into IMC.
Scud Running is an old term where you duck a little under the edge of cloud figuring you can make it to your destination. The clouds get lower and/or the terrain gets higher, but since you are really close, you duck down a little more. Soon you find yourself too low to comfortably turn back, possibly trapped in a low narrow valley with vague edges and nowhere to escape. This happens way to easily. Believe me.
There needs to be much more of this kind of information posted thanks xc.anyways hasn't heard of scud running but knew about being trapped in falling cloud base.thought that's where you were going with granite Clouds.hey you know that missing plane crash that I found in the 80s on top of south sandia peak.the determined cause was flying in ifr conditions and running into the top of the peak 10,365 msl.you can literally find dozens of old crashed planes on high peaks.when I worked the flight line at cutter aviation we used to load cadavers for transport for Wayne south aero.a pilot friend told me that once a cadaver stood up from the waist when climbing over sandia scared him so bad he almost lost control of the aircraft, it was caused by the pressure change.that same pilot was killed a year later
flew into mountain ferring a cadaver in ifr conditions
Holy Crap David, that would scare the heck out of me too, and I've been around those.