On Tuesday, 1 September 2020 at 12:19:22 UTC-6, ProfJ wrote:
Typing this with my fireproof suit on...last weekend I tried to duck between two rainy cumulus clouds on my glide back to home base. As I went through the gap it became filled with virga and I was sucked rapidly upwards, probably would have been about 10m/s if I had not had the nose well down. This was not tranquil, but not terrifying either (I was about 3000 ft below cloudbase) and added some useful height and speed.

So here's the question: would you (do you?) deliberately head into virga if you needed the boost, or is this a truly dumb thing to do? Same for rain clouds (assuming you are in updraft not downdraft zone), how close would you get?

Not looking for legal technicalities here, this was good VFR at all times - just trying to calibrate risk.

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies. I guess I was wrong calling this virga (I called it that because it was rain which did not appear to be reaching the ground), it was more likely just regular rain in an updraft, which may have been a convergence updraft as suggested in the replies. BTW I was interested how many responses related experiences in the Southwest USA (NM, CO, UT), I was flying on the West Slope in Colorado at the time so maybe it's a function of the crazy skies we have here. The consensus seems to be: proceed with caution, unless there is lightning, in which case avoid like the plague (a phrase which has admittedly lost a lot of its meaning lately)..