On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 15:07:29 -0500, Dan Luke wrote:

CBs down here are like ants at a picnic: you're just going to have to
deal with them if you want to play. Getting up high enough is one way,
but that means flying at least a turbo or preferably a pressurized
turbine airplane. If you don't have that, you have to decide where you
can fly and still see the bad boys. On most summer days, towering CU
tops are 10,000 by noon, so if there are more than a few isolated
storms the best bet is to stay down below the bases. There, you can at
least see where the dark spots are. Of course the down side of this is
that you will have a hot, muggy, bumpy ride, but at least you won't
blunder into a trap because you couldn't see what was coming.

Dan

You are so right in staying below the bases! There have been several trips
I have made from MBO (Madison MS) to L31 (Covington LA) where I almost got
myself in trouble.

It's amazing how quickly the towering CU's build! Even before 9:00 a.m., I
encountered tops over 6000.

My last trip, I left MBO at 6:00 a.m. to drop off something my sister left
behind, and 30 miles north of L31 tops were already 4000 at 7:15 a.m. Left
at 7:45 and staying in the clear, climbed to 7,500 and tops were starting
to build to my altitude. I went that high figuring to remain in the cool
air and smoother ride. Needless to say, the clear air below me was
starting to close up quickly ahead of me, and I didn't want to pick my way
through "small holes". This weather was not forecasted (ok, they said 10
percent chance of thunderstorms).

Just as you describe above, I descended (very quickly I might add!) down to
2000 (tallest object on sectional was 1100) and was able to see rain shafts
developing under the towering CU's.

Even though I remained VFR the entire time, my biggest fear was descending
through the IFR altitudes, and I was afraid of IFR traffic popping out of
the clouds, thus my reason to very quickly descend.

I zig zagged my way home staying in the sunny areas at all time as I was
afraid the rain shafts would produce undesirable downdrafts. I also keep a
very wide berth of any rainshaft in the summer time, as I just assume that
it's a thunderstorm. May be overly cautious, but I rather go 15 minutes
out of my way, then to find myself in a pickle.

GA aircraft in addition to the old spherics stanbys. Yes, there are
still days when I can't get there because of thunderstorms (once, so far
this year), but it takes a solid line of rough stuff to stop me.

I don't know if I would be so calviar about this.... I have seen TCU's go
from the scattered variety to a solid line in a 1/2 hour's period of time
down here.

I don't know what the definition of 10 percent chance of thunderstorms, but
I was under the impression, if the forecast is for 10 percent, that is 10
percent of coverage, not a 1 in 10 chance of a thunderstorm. So, if you
happened to have a thunderstorm over your head, you just so happen to be
under the 10 percent of coverage.

Allen