I learned a new aspect of the weather yesterday.

There was a flight I wanted to make badly enough to promote poor decision
making. A friend from out west was in town for just a day. The weather here
in the northeast was predicted to be totally clear but with winds that
usually produce gnarly and rough conditions. I'm comfortable in 15G25 but
the NOAA site was showing 30 - 40 knots at 3000 feet and 40 - 50 at just
6000 and I've gotten beat up in less than that. With a low just off shore
working gear like against the high, I could envision air coming in from
different directions at different levels and really stirring things up.

I wasn't feeling 100% sharp due to fighting off a cold either so I
reluctantly told my friend that our years long attempt to fly together was
foiled again.

While he was driving up the next morning, I called ATIS and the wind was 12
knots straight down the runway. I checked the latest forecasts and the
predicted speeds were down slightly. I called his cell phone and told him to
meet me at the airport.

Just after engine start, ATIS reported more wind and higher gusts than
anything reported. As we taxied out, I told my passenger that it was a
classic case of aviation decision making. I never would have considered it
if I had those numbers at home but, since we were there with the engine
running, we were going.

The takeoff was uneventful and the flight was smooth. There was an
impressive sideways drift when we reached a couple hundred AGL that I failed
to correct for because it felt almost like taking off in a calm. All day
long, our ground speed and crabbed tracks showed us flying in strong wind
but it felt almost like early morning calm. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
All the landings were effortless and smooth.

There is more to predicting this aspect of the weather than the wind speed.
The atmosphere must have been incredibly stable, the wind was like a laminar
flow and perfectly predictable. We flew up to look at Mt. Washington and
turned back when told the wind was near hurricane force on the summit. I've
been beat up and downdrafted at our turn around point when summit winds were
half the velocity.

I'm sure his has something to do with stability and vertical air motion. I'd
like to know more about it so I can make better predictions. It was
beautiful flying weather and we had the skies almost to ourselves, probably
because of the predicted winds.

--

Roger Long