Our second encounter with freezing rain

Few years ago, about this time of the year, I posted an account of
our first encounter with freezing rain. I received a number of great
advices from r.a.s & r.a.p participants. Today we encountered
freezing rain the second time and made great use of these advices.

We checked the weather the night before and learned that a front
was moving in late in the afternoon today, but figured that we would
be able to get a bit of practice in the morning. Rick got up early,
went to the airport to plug in the engine heater but was disappointed
to find that the outlet had no juice. The line service folks told us
that they had some problems with the fuel pump and had shut off the
power!

Back home, we checked the weather reports again. The temperature
was expected to rise to near 40F and the TAF reports showing rains
moving in around 4 to 5pm. We figured that noon time was probably
the best time to depart since it would be warm enough to start the
engine & we would be done with our practice by 2pm, long before the
arrival of rain.

Our plan was for Rick to fly first, doing his commercial practices
northbound toward 1B1, Columbia country airport. After getting the
cheap fuel there, I would take my turn chandelling and lazying-eight
my way back to Poughkeepsie. When we got up in the air, Rick looked
at the hazy sky ahead and thought that we might want to stay local.
However, by the time he finished with his practice, we were surprised
to find ourselves only few miles south of 1B1. It was a bit gutsy and
windy but the ceiling was high and the condition was still very much
VFR. We landed, fueled up and by the time I started the engine at
1:30pm, there was a few tiny drops of rain. I looked at the sky and
there was just a wisp of dark cloud overhead. I told Rick that it
looked like the weather was moving in much earlier than predicted so
we should head straight home.

About 10 miles or so south of 1B1, with the shadow of the Catskills
in our right hand side, it started to rain just like few years ago
when we were flying the same route from 1B1 to KPOU! Just like last
time, there was a temperature inversion and the meat thermometer
showed -2C at 2500'! Luckily, the rain was quite light so the
windshield did not turn opaque. It was just covered with small
splattered frozen rain drops. Rick looked at the leading edges and
found the same rough texture of frozen ice particles. I proclaimed
"been there, done that" and immediately pushed in full throttle,
turned on the pitot heat and window defroster. With the nearest
airport, 20N at least 15 miles away, I decided to stay at 2500'.
Going lower may get us to be just below freezing but there would be
much less vertical space to maneuver if something went wrong.

Just as last time, the freezing rain was very much local, flying
south just a few miles got us out of the rain. I still could see out
of the top of the window but tuned in the VOR and ready to fly
instruments if needed. For whatever reason, the defroster was not
very effective this time. It blew mostly cold air for a while before
the air getting lukewarm. I had thought of a diversion to 20N.
However with no additional ice accumulation, the windshield was
clearing up and KPOU ATIS indicated temperature at 2C, we decided to
continue our way home expecting that most of the ice would be melted
when we descended to land. The wind report favored runway 24 which
was the longer runway. Last time, the wind preferred the shorter rwy
33 and we were not smart enough to ask for a longer one.

As we descended, the windshield got clearer slowly and by the time
I was over the number only the bottom few inches were still covered
with ice. Last time before landing, Rick and I had some discussion
about the use of flaps with me favoring no flaps and he suggested
using 10 degrees for the short runway (I made the mistake of listening
to him ;-)). This time, there was no question that no flap landing
was the only option. I left a bit of power on and only pulled the
throttle out just before flaring. The wheels stopped with more than
2/3 of the runway left. It was a nice and smooth landing.

The tower told us to remain on the frequency while taxiing to our
tie-down spot. We heard the tower cleared another plane to takeoff
with right turn to the north approved. Rick decided to give an icing
pirep. The pilot was quite thankful and told us that he was planning
to do some maneuvers but would turn around back to KPOU.

As we tying down the plane, water dripped heavily from the wing
leading edges. It appeared that there was quite a bit more ice on the
wings than we thought. It was pretty incredible that that much ice
could have accumulated on the wings within few minutes in light
freezing rain.

So this flight was another lesson learned for us. We will
definitely take rain forecast a lot more seriously in the cold weather
and will leave a lot more room for weather variability. Initially I
thought that Rick's suggestion of allowing at least 5 hours in the
future was reasonable, but as I was writing this note, maybe not going
up at all on days such as today would be a better decision.

Hai Longworth