Additional weather education ideas

[KnownIce]

As a private pilot (VFR) I am always conscious of my relatively minimal understanding of the weather. I recently found a website with a fairly thorough catalog of cloud images along with brief descriptions of the clouds, however it is not specifically related to aviaton:
http://www.weather-photography.com/gall ... cat=clouds

I am interested to hear what resources you have come across to go beyond FTGU? In particular, I would love to see some "teaching cases", ie. where background info on a flight, including a route and weather information is provided, and some questions are asked of the reader. Any suggestions?

Or perhaps some of you more senior guys could post a quick scenario based on your experiences for us to learn from?

[Ralliart]

Free online Local Area Weather Manuals:
http://www.navcanada.ca/NavCanada.asp?L ... efault.xml

Free online study courses, many to do with weather:
http://www.aopa.org/asf/online_courses/

Free NASA icing courses:
http://aircrafticing.grc.nasa.gov/courses.html

Aerotraining weather links:
http://www.aerotraining.com/html_gif/fr ... rtools.htm

Hope this helps.

[Front.]

wow ralliart thanks for the post, nice links

[SkyWolfe]

They aren't free but Jeppesen Aviation Weather book is nice as well as Air Command Weather manual. Pretty pictures - just be aware "Aviation Weather" is US based, but info is all the same.

[mellow_pilot]

Air Command Weather Manual is completely Canadian. It's a good place to go, it's also recommended reading and (as far as I can recall) a source for TC exam questions.

Weather (beyond the FTGU level) is sometimes complex. It is easy to get confused. I suggest that if you're struggling with the ACWM, get the suppliment that goes with it, basically a work book. Go through it with a friend, discuss the questions, it'll make it a bit easier.

[just curious]

The guys who do the Check Rides for the Air Force have a study guide to prepare CF pilots for the written exam that they must write on meteorology in addition to the annual instrument exam and ride.

If you are intent on becoming a professional pilot as opposed to just taking money for flying, then an annual review of this prior to your ride is a must.

http://www.icpschool.com/exams.html

They also have an excellent center for reference sites for wx notams and flight planning.

http://www.icpschool.com/planning.html

[Icebound]

As a private pilot (VFR) I am always conscious of my relatively minimal understanding of the weather.


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It amazes me that, in Basic Training groundschool, the weather part is taught by PILOTS

Perhaps we should have meteorologists teach the Aircraft Operations, Navigation and Communications, Airmanship, Air Law, etc.


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[Icebound]

As a private pilot (VFR) I am always conscious of my relatively minimal understanding of the weather.

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I am interested to hear what resources you have come across to go beyond FTGU?

It is refreshing to see someone admit this.

Is there a market for personal tutoring? How much would Private Pilots pay for, say, 20 hours?

It doesn't hurt to ask your specific weather questions here, just as you ask flight-training questions. You never know... somebody might be willing and able to answer them...


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[tipspeed]

If it's flight training related, ask the question. No one owns this forum, it is what we make it. Be courteous. Weather is a huge component of ALL pilots knowledge base and not a single one of us knows it all.

I for one just wrote my cpl written and found that the AWM was worth the investment.

[Front.]

what types of clouds are developed in Occluded Fronts.

[mellow_pilot]

Find an occlusion on a GFA and look at the weather around it. Not too many thunderstorms.





If you're confused about it, remember the basics. Cooling from below means an increase in stability. Lots of precip and low ceilings. Lots of stratus cloud with a little cumulus embedded.

[Icebound]

well let me be the first one to pose the question.

Topic: Fronts
Type: Occluded.

Is this diagram true? I just spent 2 min drawing this on photoshop. Was wondering if a cold front overtakes the warm airmass that is on it's upslope, does the vertical development clouds develope in that whole area where the cold front over takes the warm front? or does other things like thunderstorms happen? I do know that CB is as possibility with cold front passage, but was wondering if it would only be CB and CU types developed in that occluded area, or if there is something else.

In cold-front, warm-front, occluded front, or any type of situation where lift occurs:

"clouds of vertical development" (CU types, including TCU and CB) happen when the airmass is unstable. Stratus type clouds occur when the airmass is stable.

Although the vertical development clouds (CB, etc.) are more prevalent on the cold front side, and the Stratus type clouds are more prevalent on the warm-front side, this is because.....:

..... most airmasses start out life as "conditionally" unstable.... That is: the air is stable until lifted to some critical point (depending on its characteristics), and only then will it become unstable and boil up into CBs. Because, on the cold-front side, the fast-moving advancing cold air usually produces the stronger lift, that is where the unstable condition is reached sooner. On the warm from side, the lift is usually much slower, and the air reaches its unstable condition less frequently.

Nevertheless, the warm-front-side lift, weaker though it may be, can still force the air up to its critical level,.... So then there can be CBs on the warm-front side as well.... embedded here and there is the overall stratus-type cloud pattern.

So the bottom line: the prevalence of vertical development clouds (CB and the like) depends on the stability of the air, and not necessarily on whether the lifting-mechanism is of the cold front or warm front type.

However, since the cold-front typically produces the stronger lift, the conditionally-stable air is more likely to reach its unstable point (and produce CBs) on the cold-front side.

Also note that even though instability was reached, and CBs form, the strength of the vertical currents in those CBs depend on just HOW unstable the airmass really is. There are CBs and then there are CBs.

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Hence in an occluded situation, CBs are more likely, (but not necessarily guaranteed) "behind" the TROWAL line (trough of warm air)... and CBs are less likely "ahead" of the TROWAL line.

But the amount of lift in the different parts of the occluded situated can get complicated by other factors. In some cases, the "warm-front" style of lift become negligibile by that point, and the cold-front-style is the only type happening. In other situations, the "warm-front" style of lift is the most prevalent, and things basically clear out behind the TROWAL line.

This recent history of a particular weather situation is useful. Besides checking the TAF for your destination, check the TAFs and METAR history for upstream stations affected by the same system, to get an idea of the stability and lift that is being produced.

Even if you are not flying, and an "interesting" weather system moves through, check the complete METAR history for affected stations to see how it developed.

You can find 24 hours of Analysis charts at:
http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/analysis/index_e.html

....and up to 36 hours of METAR history (International) at:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov (chose "aviation" and then "metars" in the left margin menu)... (NAVCAN's meagre 3-report history is not really very useful, but I digress........)


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[Front.]

Thanks icebound. I think many questions, further to what i asked here was answered. Really appreciated.

[KnownIce]

Thanks for a the links -- some great discussion above.

The main area of weather interpretation I hope to improve on is gaining a better sense of what will be happening a while later in the day, ie to better assess the return flight while still at home (I know... impossible, but I'd like to maximize what one can do). Once I'm at my destination, I'm comfortable in choosing the hotel instead of the airplane if weather is worse than expected, but I'd like to do whatever I can to improve that 'long-range' forecasting. I recognize there is no single answer to this (though 'FSS' is probably a good start -- that's why I can't really ask a specific question. So for now I'm focussing on improving my knowledge of broad systems/frontal meterology.

To follow up on the 2nd last post, I have found a website that archives years of METARs, current up to the previous 0000Z... I'm not sure the practical use of data like this in flightplanning, but in any case here it is:
http://vortex.plymouth.edu/sa_parse-u.html
Unfortunately it displays all the province's METARs for a single time, instead of all the METARs for a single station.

[Front.]

getting back to the post above, how does a good pilot determine long range forecast? Like what things are to take into factor? A few simple stuff that you guys all have memorized like 2+2 ?

[HeavyG]

Icebound,

That is one of the best posts I've read on these boards in a long time. Thanks for the info!

HG

[Icebound]

getting back to the post above, how does a good pilot determine long range forecast? Like what things are to take into factor? A few simple stuff that you guys all have memorized like 2+2 ?

Your governments have spent a great deal of money on supercomputers and high-priced scientists have programmed sophisticated simulations of the atmosphere on them.

So we may as well use them.

The Canadian charts are available on-line at:
http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/model ... bal_e.html

(There are some different versions, but this is the one I like) The ones at the top are pretty with colour and you can even animate them forward in time.

But I like the black and white ones at the bottom. These have a 4-panel display and the important ones are top and bottom right side. The top is the Forecast pressure pattern and the bottom is the Precipitiation amount forecast.

These are done twice a day, based on 0000GMT and 1200GMT data, and it takes a few hours to process, so they are done probably 5 or 6 hours after that. But even if you have to use last-nights 0000GMT as a forecast for later TODAY, it is still not a bad start.

The Pressure pattern gives you the predicted positions of Lows and Highs, so it should give you an idea whether things should be "improving" or getting worse.

The precipitation forecast in the bottom right is often key, for long range flight planning.... in winter, snow will restrict visibility, and in summer precipitation in unstable conditions means thunderstorms, and precipitation in stable conditions means low stratus and poor visibilities.

The Americans have something similar (plus WAY MORE) at:

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/

I like the "GFS", "fine" version.

When you choose a chart, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE CORRECT DATE AND TIME, for what you want. You have to choose in terms of "number of hours forward", counting from the time of the data. When the chart comes up, CHECK ITS DATE AND TIME (ususally at the top, or in a corner somewhere). Typically, the times are in GMT, so watch the DATE in the North American evening. 20th 2200 EDT is 21st GMT (0200).

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These are the same charts that forecasters base their prediction on. And not only will they help you understand what might be happening longer term, but they will help you understand what is happening now.

An oversimplified example:
A TAF such as: P6SM 15SCT 50OVC TEMPO 2SM -SN 15OVC

...could well apply 250 miles AHEAD of the low-which-is-coming-slowly, but which is still so far away that the forecaster does not expect much to happen within the 12-hour valid time of the forecast.
On the other hand, the airport is already cloudy. He is scrambling to determine if this is for some other reason... a local phenomena that is not quite fully understood... or if it is from the coming system, and the TAF deadline is nigh. So he issues something like this, while he continues to work on the problem.....

....OR, it could apply 50 miles BEHIND the low-which-is-leaving, and the forecaster simply expects some pockets of quite light snow from the residual Stratocumulus behind the low.

As a pilot, it makes a great deal of difference to know which, because in the case of "low coming", an early start to the snow means that VFR me had better think seriously of going somewhere else, because things will probably get worse. In the "low-leaving" case, I am a little more comfortable that MFVR will probably be possible.

Of course there are no guarantees, and you do have to watch out for other factors such a onshore winds a-la Buffalo recently, etc., etc., but I hope you get my drift:

Summary
Knowing the weather situation, as depicted by the analysis of current data, by the METAR history of upstream airports, as well as the computer generated forecast charts, all help you to understand the forecaster's reasoning for the TAF which you have, and the probable prospects beyond that. Even if all you can understand is the fact that the low is "coming" or "going".

Take a look at the precipitation forecast, in particular. Big numbers mean lots of precipitation and more probable low-ceiling, and/or low visibility, and/or thunderstorm conditions.


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