Denver wind

I'm getting sick of it. It feels like Wyoming down here! (Sorry Ben)
 
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Sunday was windy, too. I went out for some t&g practice for the last time before my upcoming checkride. Winds were all over the place from steady to gusting in the upper 20s. I called it after an hour of getting tossed around. Good experience, but man, was it rough!
 
KBJC 152155Z 27030G48KT 60SM FEW070 FEW120 BKN200 13/M04 A2979
KBJC 152045Z 27035G50KT 30SM SCT060 BKN150 12/M04 A2981
KBJC 151845Z 27033G49KT 30SM SCT060 BKN150 13/M05 A2985
actually greased it but the outcome was in doubt! Those reports were after I left btw.
 
Yeah it's gnarly today. Kudos to anyone flying today.. #barf :D
 
Still pretty nutty out. Karen said, "It's windy out here but the house isn't shaking... yet." Haha. Guess I know she's gotten used to it on the prairie, if she's talking like that. Ha.
 
Our house is shaking. Sounds a lot stronger than 58mph gusts right now.
 
It's rough all the way up to Foco... Though its windy here because Boulder sucks and Wyoming blows.
 
I'm south of Boulder so we're getting Boulder farts!
 
I left KDEN about 2.5 hours ago heading to seattle. The poor 737-300 was flapping its wings like a bird. It did help put me to sleep.
 
At least I'm in good company here. I just registered for this forum after scrubbing my planned flight for wind, for the third time in as many weeks.

I went out to KBJC with plans of taking the wife up in a rental C152 today. The winds were a mere 5 knots as I walked into the FBO, but quickly gusted up before I could even head out to the ramp for a preflight. Oh well, I figured it might quickly pass, so I stick the lady in the plane and start doing my dance just in case things calm down. As I'm doing my preflight I see another plane from the FBO taxiing out for takeoff… they returned about 10 minutes later, reporting that the tower was reporting gusts above 40 knots when they were ready for takeoff.

I called the AWOS number again to verify what I already could feel on my face: wind was 270 @ 33, gusts to 44. Not terribly far off of runway 30R, but 44 knots didn't sound fun in a 152.
 
Coloradokevin said:
At least I'm in good company here. I just registered for this forum after scrubbing my planned flight for wind, for the third time in as many weeks.

I went out to KBJC with plans of taking the wife up in a rental C152 today. The winds were a mere 5 knots as I walked into the FBO, but quickly gusted up before I could even head out to the ramp for a preflight. Oh well, I figured it might quickly pass, so I stick the lady in the plane and start doing my dance just in case things calm down. As I'm doing my preflight I see another plane from the FBO taxiing out for takeoff… they returned about 10 minutes later, reporting that the tower was reporting gusts above 40 knots when they were ready for takeoff.

I called the AWOS number again to verify what I already could feel on my face: wind was 270 @ 33, gusts to 44. Not terribly far off of runway 30R, but 44 knots didn't sound fun in a 152.
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First post....

Welcome to POA...

:cheers::cheers:
 
N801BH said:
First post....

Welcome to POA...

:cheers::cheers:
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Thanks! I wasn't sure if there was a first post thread or not, but I immediately gravitated to the Denver wind thread and figured I'd just use it as a place to introduce myself.
 
Coloradokevin said:
At least I'm in good company here. I just registered for this forum after scrubbing my planned flight for wind, for the third time in as many weeks.

I went out to KBJC with plans of taking the wife up in a rental C152 today. The winds were a mere 5 knots as I walked into the FBO, but quickly gusted up before I could even head out to the ramp for a preflight. Oh well, I figured it might quickly pass, so I stick the lady in the plane and start doing my dance just in case things calm down. As I'm doing my preflight I see another plane from the FBO taxiing out for takeoff… they returned about 10 minutes later, reporting that the tower was reporting gusts above 40 knots when they were ready for takeoff.

I called the AWOS number again to verify what I already could feel on my face: wind was 270 @ 33, gusts to 44. Not terribly far off of runway 30R, but 44 knots didn't sound fun in a 152.
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You know you're in trouble when the winds at DIA are worse than on Monarch Pass!

Hi Kevin, you're now on our CO-POA list.
 
murphey said:
You know you're in trouble when the winds at DIA are worse than on Monarch Pass!

Hi Kevin, you're now on our CO-POA list.
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No doubt! It has been crazy out here for a few days now. Curiously, we left KBJC after abandoning our plans for flying today, and then went immediately to the barn where we board our horse. That barn is located just south of Standley Lake, still well within the Class D for KBJC. But, there at the barn it was as close to calm as you could hope for (3-5mph breeze at best). I was curious, so I called the AWOS number again and noted that it was still blowing like crazy up at the airport. I swear they built that airport as a natural wind tunnel!

Anyway, thanks for adding me to the list! :)
 
Coloradokevin said:
No doubt! It has been crazy out here for a few days now. Curiously, we left KBJC after abandoning our plans for flying today, and then went immediately to the barn where we board our horse. That barn is located just south of Standley Lake, still well within the Class D for KBJC. But, there at the barn it was as close to calm as you could hope for (3-5mph breeze at best). I was curious, so I called the AWOS number again and noted that it was still blowing like crazy up at the airport. I swear they built that airport as a natural wind tunnel!



Anyway, thanks for adding me to the list! :)
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Isn't it nice they also built the entire city downwind of a nuclear weapon trigger plant that regularly got rid of things by sticking them in incinerators? Right down the road from BJC... Hehehe.
 
denverpilot said:
Isn't it nice they also built the entire city downwind of a nuclear weapon trigger plant that regularly got rid of things by sticking them in incinerators? Right down the road from BJC... Hehehe.
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We were just talking about that yesterday, as we drove past that giant new housing development at Candela's, while the winds ripped across Rocky Flats at gale force. I have to imagine that this new neighborhood is going to be filled mostly with transplants who don't realize that their home borders one of the most polluted superfund sites in the country… a place that was even raided by the FBI due to their disposal practices!

I totally understand the need to build nuke triggers back in the Cold War, but 40 years of working with plutonium at that site must have made a mess of the surrounding area.
 
And the landowners all around the plant were compensated for their loss of value and next thing you know, McMansions all around.
 
Coloradokevin said:
But, there at the barn it was as close to calm as you could hope for (3-5mph breeze at best). I was curious, so I called the AWOS number again and noted that it was still blowing like crazy up at the airport. I swear they built that airport as a natural wind tunnel!
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yup - It's really strange what those big piles of rocks to our west do to the winds here. I remember spring a couple of years ago I was doing some night currency at EIK where the winds were reported calm. At about 500 AGL they had to have been 270ish at 20+ knots. Took me a couple of times around the patch to widen out my downwind and turn final early enough to make it back down. I definitely respect the role that the valleys and mountains play in reported winds now -- calm on the surface is just that. Only a few hundred feet aloft can be a completely different story!

Anyhow, welcome to POA! (I'm based out of LMO)
 
We have a high wind warning for Weds night, possible 60-70 mph in the mountains.
 
With a 70 mph direct headwind in a Cessna 152 you could probably try some alternative landing techniques… maybe fly to the departure end of the runway, put it in "reverse", and back it onto the runway. I wonder how easy it would be to sideslip backwards?

I'm not one to show off, so I'll just let one of you guys try that technique first… Please do share a video though!

Sigh. I'm so sick of wind right now.
 
gkainz said:
And the landowners all around the plant were compensated for their loss of value and next thing you know, McMansions all around.
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8095c5d5560a853ddf458242770cfbfb.jpg
 
Friend went out to get night current on Sunday, annoyed that I didn't come along and also get night current. Called me later to cry about the winds, that he and his wife were almost scared witless. "but ADDS didn't report anything like this!!!!"

Didn't he even bother to listen to any of the local evening news& weather? Or winds aloft? He's been flying out here for 10 years and still doesn't understand what the geography does to weather. Noooo, all he wants to do is complain that the home drome fuel prices aren't the cheapest around.
 
I learned to fly at BJC. 20G33 was good student solo weather. Other than that except for the transient thunderstorm the weather was perfect. You could see forever and you could fly around those little thunderstorms.

My wife learned to fly at IAD. Winds are usually fairly mild, but 5 miles in haze is the standard summer visibility.

For a long time, if it was windy I'd fly, if it was hazy she would. That worked until I got my instrument rating. Then she decided if the weather was nice it should be her turn as I'd get to fly if it was bad.
 
I actually had a computer terminal (Model 37 ASR) that had a Rocky Flats property tag on it.
 
I took a ground tour of Rocky Flats in order for them to show me the buildings they didn't want me crashing into while I was doing aerial survey. It was required with the contract. This was well before 9/11. Probably around 1990.
 
flyingron said:
I learned to fly at BJC. 20G33 was good student solo weather. Other than that except for the transient thunderstorm the weather was perfect. You could see forever and you could fly around those little thunderstorms.

My wife learned to fly at IAD. Winds are usually fairly mild, but 5 miles in haze is the standard summer visibility.

For a long time, if it was windy I'd fly, if it was hazy she would. That worked until I got my instrument rating. Then she decided if the weather was nice it should be her turn as I'd get to fly if it was bad.
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I think you nailed it there. I learned to fly at KOSU (Ohio State's airport in central Ohio), and a high visibility day there might approach ten miles. Around here it is common to see from Pikes Peak to Longs Peak on any given day, and those mountains must be about 100 miles apart. But, the winds were rarely this strong in Ohio, and they're commonly strong out here.
 
Everskyward said:
I took a ground tour of Rocky Flats in order for them to show me the buildings they didn't want me crashing into while I was doing aerial survey. It was required with the contract. This was well before 9/11. Probably around 1990.
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I used to have to go work on their private conference call system occasionally. Definitely a more thorough search of the vehicle than any I've ever had at border crossings...

What was funny/odd was I had multiple cases with test gear in them, and they didn't even get opened or looked inside of, but they stuck mirrors under the car. Amongst other things. More interested in the outside of the vehicle than what was inside.

Did remote support for years for Savannah River also but never got to go there. Boss was locked in a conference room there one day when they had an "event" they were tracking and locked down the place.

Also used to be in the middle of talking to the on-site Verizon guy working some issue and he'd say, "Drill!" and hang up the phone and my data connection to the site would drop.

He wanted to get out of the meat locker temperature telecom room and across the hall into his office before his hallway was shut down to people traffic for an hour by the "nice 18 year olds with M-16s" as he liked to call them.

And he wasn't allowed to let me stay connected unless he was sitting at the console of the system monitoring what I was doing, so he would throw the physical deactivation switch for disconnecting the remote access device and run. Literally.

He explained it's no fun to be held against the wall at gunpoint until the squad leader could get the Sarge to confirm he's the same Verizon guy who's been there for 20 years. So he learned to dash across the hall to his comfy chair if the alarms went off. Haha.

He'd call me back from his desk, and we would usually reschedule the maintenance or troubleshooting for the next day.

Fun times in the world of telecom. Sometimes I miss talking to the familiar voices at all the sites.
 
I was with Oracle on contract at Rocky Flats from 90-95ish ... luckily most of the time was off-site. Did end up donating an Oracle laptop to them when it was carried into one of those "nothing leaves this building" locations.
The last year on-site was in a couple of buildings that had yellow caution tape on all the stairwells, walls, etc ... gives one a creepy feeling ... "trust us! It's safe!"
 
gkainz said:
I was with Oracle on contract at Rocky Flats from 90-95ish ... luckily most of the time was off-site. Did end up donating an Oracle laptop to them when it was carried into one of those "nothing leaves this building" locations.

The last year on-site was in a couple of buildings that had yellow caution tape on all the stairwells, walls, etc ... gives one a creepy feeling ... "trust us! It's safe!"
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That's around the time I was up there periodically and they had similar signage and whatnot. The conference system was ancient and analog that they owned back from a better budgetary time in the distant past. I wasn't usually interested in dawdling and talking to folks before heading back to the office from that place. But didn't have to deal with the more secured buildings at all. Telecom (surprisingly) is considered insecure most of the time in those environments so it's usually on the fringes of the highly secured stuff. Close enough to run one conduit underground usually, but not in the same building(s).

Supposedly Savannah River was different in that the stupid designers of the complex stuffed telecom in a basement of a mixed security building. Which means it then isn't *really* mixed, it's secure, and you had to go through all sorts of crap to get tools in.

We wouldn't have to "donate" our test gear as long as it never left the eyeballs of our escort(s). After being um, inspected on the way in and out. (I'll leave the inspection details out. Let's just say they made TSA look like *******.)

Yay Cold War. The pay was good. Ha. I think I ended up doing more FAA stuff because nobody could believe a 20-something and barely that, was showing up to fix these things back then. Everyone in "red circuit" telecom had white hair, even back then. Nowadays I'd fit right in! Haha. But we were a vendor and not a Bell entity or privatized spin off, so we had a relatively young staff and a few ex-Bell system greybeards.

It's all their fault I want all my data center cables all pretty and laced in properly. It's a curse. I don't talk about it much. Hahaha.
 
The building that ate the laptop had armed physical guards at the revolving door portal (with REALLY thick glass doors) and locked, swinging doors on both sides of the portal, IIRC, and then physical badge inspection (or vice versa) and then retina and thumb scan on the next two doors.

Edit - well blow me over ... I just googled "rocky flats stacker retriever" on a sheer whim, thinking maybe somebody snuck some photos online ... holy carp there's a metric plutonium **** ton of images on line! (ok, more than a couple, which is about 10 times more than I expected)

and another metric plutonium sh*t ton of images on another project I worked on - again google - "rocky flats super compactor"
 
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Here we go again... wow...

High Wind Warning

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER/BOULDER CO 1139 AM MST THU FEB 18 2016 ...VERY STRONG WINDS DEVELOPING OVER THE FRONT RANGE MOUNTAINS AND FOOTHILLS TODAY AND POSSIBLY SPREAD TO PORTIONS OF THE PLAINS THIS EVENING... .A STRONG AND FAST MOVING WEATHER SYSTEM WILL BRING POWERFUL WINDS INTO THE COLORADO HIGH COUNTRY TODAY AND TONIGHT. WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO INCREASE OVER THE FRONT RANGE MOUNTAINS THROUGH THE AFTERNOON...INCREASINGLY REACHING DOWN THE FOOTHILLS BY LATE IN THE DAY. THE PEAK OF THE POTENTIALLY DAMAGING WINDS IS EXPECTED TO BE THIS EVENING WITH THE PASSAGE OF A PACIFIC COLD FRONT. IN THE MOUNTAINS AND FOOTHILLS...WIND GUSTS OF 50 TO 75 MPH WILL BE COMMON...WITH A FEW HIGHER WIND PRONE AREAS RECEIVING GUSTS AS HIGH AS 100 MPH. A PERIOD OF STRONG WINDS WILL ALSO OCCUR ON THE PLAINS THIS EVENING BEHIND THE COLD FRONT. POTENTIALLY DAMAGING WINDS ARE POSSIBLE WEST OF I-25 AND IN AREAS NEAR THE WYOMING BORDER. WIND GUSTS UP TO 60 MPH ARE POSSIBLE ON THE NORTHERN PLAINS...WITH GUSTS AS HIGH AS 80 MPH IN WIND PRONE AREAS NEAR THE FOOTHILLS. THE WINDS ON THE PLAINS WILL WEAKEN BY FRIDAY MORNING. WINDS IN THE MOUNTAINS AND FOOTHILLS WILL NOT WEAKEN UNTIL LATER IN THE DAY FRIDAY. COZ033-034-190245- /O.CON.KBOU.HW.W.0002.000000T0000Z-160219T1900Z/ SOUTH AND EAST JACKSON/LARIMER/NORTH AND NORTHEAST GRAND/ NORTHWEST BOULDER COUNTIES ABOVE 9000 FEET- SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST GRAND/WEST CENTRAL AND SOUTHWEST BOULDER/ GILPIN/CLEAR CREEK/SUMMIT/NORTH AND WEST PARK COUNTIES ABOVE 9000 FEET- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...CAMERON PASS... LARAMIE AND MEDICINE BOW MOUNTAINS...RABBIT EARS RANGE... ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK...WILLOW CREEK PASS... BERTHOUD PASS...BRECKENRIDGE...EAST SLOPES MOSQUITO RANGE... EAST SLOPES SOUTHERN GORE RANGE...EISENHOWER TUNNEL... INDIAN PEAKS...KENOSHA MOUNTAINS...MOUNT EVANS... WILLIAMS FORK MOUNTAINS...WINTER PARK 1139 AM MST THU FEB 18 2016 ...HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON MST FRIDAY... * TIMING...STRONG SOUTHWEST WINDS WILL BECOME MORE WIDESPREAD THROUGH THE AFTERNOON...AND PEAK IN THE LATE AFTERNOON AND EVENING HOURS. * WINDS...SOUTHWEST TO WEST WINDS OF 30 TO 50 MPH ABOVE 10 THOUSAND FEET AND ON THE EAST SLOPES OF THE FRONT RANGE. PEAK GUSTS OF 75 TO 100 MPH IN WIND PRONE AREAS. * IMPACTS...TRAVELERS IN THE HIGHER MOUNTAINS SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR VERY STRONG WINDS CAUSING HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS INCLUDING LOW VISIBILITIES IN AREAS OF BLOWING SNOW. THE WORST CONDITIONS WILL BE IN THE LATE AFTERNOON AND EVENING WHEN SEVERAL INCHES OF SNOW WILL FALL ALONG WITH THE WIND. ROAD CLOSURES ARE POSSIBLE DUE TO POOR VISIBILITIES AND THE THREAT OF AVALANCHES. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... REMEMBER...A HIGH WIND WARNING MEANS THAT STRONG AND POTENTIALLY DAMAGING WINDS ARE EITHER OCCURRING OR HIGHLY LIKELY. RESIDENTS SHOULD MOVE TRASH CANS...PATIO FURNITURE...AND ANY OTHER ITEMS EASILY TOSSED ABOUT BY HIGH WINDS INDOORS. MOTORISTS TRAVELING IN HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES SHOULD DELAY TRAVEL UNTIL THE WINDS SUBSIDE.
 
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