I'm clear on how far away I have to stay from clouds during VFR flight, and
I thought I knew a cloud when I saw one, but...
I took my brother-in-law up for his birthday yesterday morning. It was
pretty darn cool for late August, and all the river valleys were filled with
fog. In fact, several nearby fields were reporting near zero visibilities.
But my home airport, which sits on the top of a hill, was reporting sky
clear and visibility greater than 10 miles. He wasn't interested in seeing
anything special, so we just took off, did a quick turn around the city, and
came back into the pattern for a few touch and goes.
The tower cleared us straight in for the first one. As I entered downwind
for the next one, though, they told me to extend my downwind and that I was
#2 behind a Citation on an 8 mile final. This normally wouldn't be a big
deal at all, but the downwind leg that I was on passes directly over a steel
plant, which (like most steel mils) sits right along a river. All of the
natural fog from the river itself was safely down in the valley, well below
the airport. But the steel plant was throwing up this huge amount of vapor
which extended well above pattern altitude.
I'm guessing this counts as a "cloud", right? I mean, I couldn't see
through it. I don't know what the visibility would have been like inside of
it, and I'm fairly sure that I would have been through it and out the other
side in a matter of seconds, but it seemed to me that I should stay clear of
it. I reduced my speed a bit to keep my extended downwind from getting too
close to the steel mill, and began to think of a plan that would keep the
tower happy and me in legal VFR conditions. I was just about to ask to do a
360 in place when the Citation came over the numbers and the tower cleared
me to turn base.
At that point, I asked to switch from touch-and-go to full stop, mostly
because I didn't want to get caught facing that vapor cloud again. In
hidsight, I suppose I could have asked to fly right traffic instead of left.
There was nobody else in the pattern, and I don't think the tower
controllers would have cared. But I didn't think of that at the time, and I
wasn't convinced that I could stay legal if someone in authority decided
that pillar of vapor coming from the steel plant constituted a "cloud". So
I just landed and cut the flight short.
So was it a cloud or not?
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