how many of you have been caught flying in a thunderstorm?

[rbridges]

Never been an issue for me, but now that I've got my instrument rating, I've been more aware of it. This summer has been particularly difficult. After years of drought, we've had evening showers and thunderstorms almost every day.

Last weekend, I got a briefing in the morning, and no convection was in the forecast. The airport I left on my return trip had blue skies, and my home airport was 40 miles away. I beat HEAVY rain and wind by less than 5 minutes. Even though it was just a few hours later, I guess I should have gotten another briefing.

Despite taking precautions, I'm sure some of you have wandered into some awful stuff. Just wondering how bad it got and what to expect if it happens to me. I'm especially interested in how smaller planes i.e. single engine handle the storms.

 

[Lance F]

I'm not far from you and am amazed at the TS this season. They seem to be everywhere.

I've done a lot of cross country in a Mooney in the southeast, and it is very doable. My best tool is onboard NEXRAD. The ways to get this keep getting cheaper and cheaper, and I can't imaging flying without it. I also have a storm scope.

It is very unwise to penetrate a TS in IMC conditions. Getting down below the bases in VMC is often a good tactic. If this is too low for ATC, then go VFR. The alternative is to deviate. You may have to fly quite a ways off course sometimes, but that's the way it is.

It's always safest to stay visual, but the time may come when you end up in what ATC calls "heavy to extreme precipitation". Slow down to Va, have the pitot heat on, keep the wings level, don't worry about altitude deviations so much as airspeed, scan-scan-scan. The rain will be loud. It will be turbulent. Assuming you didn't get yourself in a real higher level TS like Scott Crossfield did, your smaller single engine plane can handle it, but it may not be much fun.

 

[wabower]

Almost 40 years ago, at night, over Kirksville MO, Mooney 20F.

It wasn't a full-blown storm, just a cell. I had no storm detection equipment on board and center radar was primitive. Center guys bitched that they were the ones trying to save airplanes and the NWS guys down the street had all the good radar units in their shop.

Anyway, nobody saw the one that center steered me through until I was in it. I got several jolting whacks from being thrown against the ceiling and emerged from the cloud dizzy and dazed. Paul Ryan was just starting to sell stormscopes at the time and I resolved to become one of his first customers.

I don't ever want to fly through another one, but would choose a Mooney over most other planes if it became necessary.

 

[flyingmoose]

I think its inevitable that if you fly enough in IMC conditions that you will eventually get into some of it. Trying to stay away from the heavy stuff and using tools to keep you away from it. Like Wayne said, its no fun.

 

[Brad Z]

Almost 40 years ago, at night, over Kirksville MO, Mooney 20F.

It wasn't a full-blown storm, just a cell. I had no storm detection equipment on board and center radar was primitive. Center guys bitched that they were the ones trying to save airplanes and the NWS guys down the street had all the good radar units in their shop.

Anyway, nobody saw the one that center steered me through until I was in it. I got several jolting whacks from being thrown against the ceiling and emerged from the cloud dizzy and dazed. Paul Ryan was just starting to sell stormscopes at the time and I resolved to become one of his first customers.

I don't ever want to fly through another one, but would choose a Mooney over most other planes if it became necessary.

That's scary. Would a stormscope have helped in that situation? It detects lightning, which should be visible at night. Were you IMC at the time?

 

[Ted]

If you go flying on days when there is convective activity, you will probably end up in one at some point.

XM/datalink weather is nice, but it's also slow and will not tell you about rapidly developing cells. We have on-board radar and a stormscope in the 310. There have been some folks who trusted XM too much and ended up dead.

Main thing is avoiding. If you end up in one, Va and wings level. Don't worry about altitude - airspeed and wings level are the concerns. Keep your cool if it ever happens and you'll probably pop out the other side just fine. Going below can work, going around is best. Sometimes you just gotta wait it out.

The people who break airplanes in two are the ones who end up going too fast, jerk the controls, and surfaces then fall off. Don't do that.

 

[kgruber]

I got several jolting whacks from being thrown against the ceiling and emerged from the cloud dizzy and dazed.

Did that ever go away?

Anyway, I was flying the Macy's execs between Roseburg and North Bend Oregon. We were in our King Air 65-A90 that had an antique RCA AVQ-47. I swear, they went to Davis Monthan and got that RADAR out of a pre war B-17. It was an adventure to even try to use that scope, even after Archie Tramwell whipped us into shape.

We went through a cell, nothing like a real mid-west storm, just a little tiny Oregon cell. Bam, Wham, Slam, and poof..........spit right out into the bright sun of the Oregon coast.

 

[rbridges]

glad to know the planes can get through it. I have a stormscope and plan on getting stratus for my ipad.

Lance, I still need to come up there a do a breakfast fly in with you guys.

 

[wabower]

Can't say for sure, but inclined to think the SS would have seen the convective. After that event I had one in every plane for more than 30 years and was never again surprised by the location of a cell.

That's scary. Would a stormscope have helped in that situation? It detects lightning, which should be visible at night. Were you IMC at the time?

 

[Sailer]

That's scary. Would a stormscope have helped in that situation? It detects lightning, which should be visible at night. Were you IMC at the time?

Stormscope will pick up in cloud lightning that will give an indication of convection and turbulence. With that, and XM or ADS-B it should give a pretty accurate and timely picture of what is going on. But as everyone is saying, stay visual.

 

[dell30rb]

Stormscope is effective. It shows the bearing and an approximate distance of cells in real time.

I have never been in a full blown TS cell and hope I don't. However I did wander into some stuff I wish I hadn't. I departed elizabeth city with 800 ft ceilings, 5000 ft tops and widely scattered tstorms. There was a low pressure off the coast, the wind was out of the NE and small cells would flare up and die out very quickly.

I checked the radar just before departing and nothing in my area. My plan was to get on top ASAP which didn't happen too quickly in a near-gross warrior. Anyway I climbed out and in the process ran into a very heavy rain shower with light turbulence that only lasted 20 seconds. I have flown through moderate precip (nexrad yellow) plenty and this seemed like 3x the rain intensity. All that happened was the airplane got a really good bath, but it was a little scary because I was not expecting it and I knew there was a remote possibility I could blunder into a real storm on my way to the tops.

The above was probably a bad decision on my part - considering my lack of nexrad or storm scope. I figured with how widely scattered the convection was, and that I would only be spending a few minutes in the clouds that the odds were very low I would run into some bad stuff.

Now I fly with stormscope plus nexrad and don't take chances.

 

[gismo]

glad to know the planes can get through it. I have a stormscope and plan on getting stratus for my ipad.

Lance, I still need to come up there a do a breakfast fly in with you guys.

NEXRAD and Stormscopes can be used to avoid TRW successfully but in many situations that avoidance dictates an extremely large deviation, landing short of your planned destination, or turning around and hightailing it back to where you started from. A lot of IFR pilots say they avoid TRW visually but personally I haven't found that to be terribly successful without aborting or cancelling a lot of flights as the weather I often fly in just doesn't usually provide enough clear air around the cells to do that.

I do believe that if you studiously maintain at least a 25nm separation from any sparks on the SS and keep a similar distance from anything that looks potentially serious on NEXRAD you are very unlikely to end up inside a cell. That doesn't mean you won't get to see a lightning discharge a half mile away or get tossed around enough to want your belts cinched up tight but this should keep you out of the hail and really violent severe turbulence unless you manage to poke your way into a building cell that turned ugly fast exactly when you entered it.

With 25 years of instrument flying in the midwest and southeast I've never gotten into anything I thought was life threatening. I've bounced my noggin off the cabin roof a number of times but more than half of those incidents occurred in VMC underneath some very unstable air. I started with nothing but ATC and Flight Watch for wx avoidance and installed a Stormscope within the first year of my IR (this was long before NEXRAD or any commercially available remote display of radar images) and for the past 16 years have been flying with XM, Stormscope, and onboard radar. With that combination I'm comfortable flying through fairly narrow gaps in long lines of TRW even when that means remaining in IMC but without the onboard radar I wouldn't want to try that.

 

[SCCutler]

I am extremely diligent about avoiding thunderstorm activity. If I believe there is a chance of embedded convective activity, I will not fly in IMC. This works fine in the warm weather months, when I can generally fly low and bumpy, under the bases, and simply not fly where the rain shafts and lighting are found.

Flying around in the South, especially along the coast, there will almost always be build ups during the hot summer afternoons, so I try to restrict my flying in these regions to morning flying wherever possible.

With the XM weather, together with my strike finder, I typically have a pretty good idea where the trouble may be found. I have on a number of occasions had to deviate pretty substantially to avoid flying through weather with which I was not comfortable, and have landed short to wait out either a frontal passage, or simply allowing the worst of the storms to die down and move on, and I've never regretted the time spent waiting or deviating.

Last year, my wife and I were flying to Pensacola, and as we were being vectored for the approach, along with about a dozen Navy trainees and their instructors, I was being vectored straight into a wall of water which, according to my strike finder, included some pretty good lighting as well; this is when my judicious and timely use of he Contact Approach saved me some serious time, bouncing and discomfort, and saved the Approach Controllers some effort. They were Very Glad to clear me for the Contact Approach and hand me off to Tower.

 

[j1b3h0]

I used to fly a Turbo Commander between Reno and Vegas, without wx radar, stormscope, etc. More than once, I found myself in the midst of some significant cumulus vomitus. Besides getting your teeth knocked out in moderate or greater turbulence, there were other, no-so-subtle, tell tail signs: Frequent brilliant flashes of lightning, Prop tips glowing blue, lots of St. Elmo's fire, much scratchiness from the radios (I used to turn ADF to a low freq with the volume up). If on a well-traveled route, listen up for other aircraft ahead of you lobbying for wx deviations. Take lots of fuel. If the storms are widely scattered, it's pretty easy to see and avoid, but give serious consideration to flight planning when there are embedded T-storms. Turboprops and turbocharged get you high enough to get in serious trouble...fortunately, they're equipt with the tools a skilled pilot can use to stay out of harms way.

 

[Inverted]

I have been struck by lightning once, and I have been caught in cells multiple times during my days flying freight. I have seen St. Elmo's Fire, and have seen strikes close by while in IMC countless times. It is not a fun place to be, and I am glad I am flying a plane that can avoid this stuff by flying above or around efficiently.

 

[nosehair]

Try to penetrate the cell at 4000' agl. Best altitude for least turbulence.
Been thru hundreds in light airplanes and helicopters.
If you fly every day in the south in the summer, you will encounter TS.

 

[FORANE]

Just wondering how bad it got and what to expect if it happens to me. I'm especially interested in how smaller planes i.e. single engine handle the storms.

As others have said, try to avoid the stuff. If you fly IFR, invest in XM WX or ADSB. Don't try to hold altitude, jerk controls, exceed maneuvering speed in convective, or rely on ATC to keep you out of the worst, etc.

Small planes handle storms differently as there are many different models. Higher wing loading will feel less than lower wing loading planes. I have a 1000lb Lancair and trust it more than I would trust other models such as Cessna 1xx series.

How bad it got: Before I invested in XM I relied on ATC for vectors around the worst. As I understand it different ATC locations have (or had a few years back) different quality weather radar. I had ATL center hand me off to KTRI and warn me of severe buildups in my path advising me to ask KTRI for vectors around it. KTRI advised me they did not see anything worse in front of me. Next thing I knew I flew into an embedded black CB cloud. Rain was heavier than I have ever seen; water came into the plane where I have never seen before. Rain was so heavy I could not hear the radio. The black cloud occasionally lit up by lightning. I was thrown into the canopy a few times.

Invest in XM or ADS-b. It's worth it.

 

[JimG.]

Never been an issue for me, but now that I've got my instrument rating, I've been more aware of it. …

I've only been caught in one, while on an instrument flight in my old Bonanza and didn't get a heads up from center.

My 340 had all the “stuff” to keep me out of it. NEXRAD Was probably my best friend in that I used it to stay far away from the yellow and red places, and with the speed I had at my disposal… a deviation of 50+ miles was not even a concern, unless it bumped me near restricted areas and things got a little tight.

 

[Hank S]

Hey, Rob.

Did you move? Saw Warner Robins, had to wonder. If the storms ever clear up, I'll be visiting MLJ one weekend, not far from Warner Robins.

Avoid thunderstorms by whatever method(s) are required. When they are about, it's often wise to file and fly beneath them so you can see the rainshafts and ask ATC for vectors around them. I flew from KFAY beyond KGSO at 4000 msl [filed for 10,000] to keep an eye out and dodge things in the way. Then climbed into the soup to cross the mountains, as 4000' is somewhat underground in spots.

ATC can giveyou a heads up with vectors, but it's not the best method. I've been shaken and stirred doing that--dad blasted Greenville Approach wouldn't let me climb "to keep from having to deviate around Charlotte" so instead they kept me in the thick of it, dodging embedded heavy precipitation, vector this way and that way, until I caught an updraft. When I levelled out 1600' higher than before, I could see scattered blue and asked to climb; that's when they gave me the deviation story. So I climbed into smooth blue skies and turned 10º right; the buildups were obvious, much higher than the ~9000' cloud tops, and easy to avoid.

When maneuvering around them [above or below], make sure you pass behind the storm and not in front of it. That way it won't surprise you by speeding up, turning, throwing hail or gust fronts at you. For the same reason, don't go between two that are very close, look for those nice 40-nm gaps and edge closer to the one leaving than to the one approaching.

If tops are too high and the ceiling is too low to fly comfortably beneath them, then I don't fly that day. Even when it means a 6-hour drive tomorrow.

 

[AirDC]

We had to fly through this unforecast line on the way back from Iqualuit to Schefferville in a 182RG. No radar in that area. No ATC. No where to land. No visible gaps. Not enough fuel (at 2 hours rem) to get anywhere but our destination. We went through around 5000'.

The Columbia 350 ahead of us was about 20 minutes ahead and had made it through alive, although there comments to us on our air-to-air freq were "we were sh*tting our pants but you should pop out in 5 minutes". That was a slight boost of confidence.

We started to pierce the cell. It was immediately violent. We diverted alongside the cell as far as we could before further wasn't an option anymore and cut through - it looked a little less life threatening then the original plan. 2000' FPM up and down drafts. lightning flashes. Stormscope lighting up like a hyperactive child plugging in pegs into light bright.

We made it out the other side. I'm looking forward to never doing that again.

 

[Ted]

We had to fly through this unforecast line on the way back from Iqualuit to Schefferville in a 182RG. No radar in that area. No ATC. No where to land. No visible gaps. Not enough fuel (at 2 hours rem) to get anywhere but our destination. We went through around 5000'.

The Columbia 350 ahead of us was about 20 minutes ahead and had made it through alive, although there comments to us on our air-to-air freq were "we were sh*tting our pants but you should pop out in 5 minutes". That was a slight boost of confidence.

We started to pierce the cell. It was immediately violent. We diverted alongside the cell as far as we could before further wasn't an option anymore and cut through - it looked a little less life threatening then the original plan. 2000' FPM up and down drafts. lightning flashes. Stormscope lighting up like a hyperactive child plugging in pegs into light bright.

We made it out the other side. I'm looking forward to never doing that again.

Yeah, I had similar in the Navajo going from Chibougamau to Chisasibi, except nobody on air-to-air. Managed to get around the worst of it with the radar and stormscope.

When you're flying up there, you best be self-sufficient. Even if you have ATC, they really don't know any more about the weather since there aren't weather radar stations up there.

 

[RyanShort1]

This cloud went from a cumulus cloud when I checked final before takeoff - to this ugly little monster in less then 3 minutes.

Ryan

 

[JimG.]

When I levelled out 1600' higher than before, I could see scattered blue and asked to climb; that's when they gave me the deviation story. So I climbed into smooth blue skies and turned 10º right; the buildups were obvious, much higher than the ~9000' cloud tops, and easy to avoid.

Out West, climbing is never an option.

They go almost to heaven and if you try to climb out of them… it's often a one-way ticket to there

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Despite taking precautions, I'm sure some of you have wandered into some awful stuff. Just wondering how bad it got and what to expect if it happens to me. I'm especially interested in how smaller planes i.e. single engine handle the storms.

Yup - Went flying at 9,000 feet in a layer of broken cumulus one day where they didn't forecast convective activity. (The more experience I get, the less I believe the forecasts of "good" weather.) Was cruising along and looking up through the breaks to try to spot any visibly higher tops in my area.

Well, I flew into one cloud that decided it was time to be upwardly mobile - With nary a bump, my VSI did a backflip and the altimeter started winding up. I pulled the power all the way to idle but I was headed up anyway.

Without repeating the details again (they've been posted more than once), here was the takeaway: It's difficult to detect an early-stage t-storm. ATC's radar didn't show it until several minutes later. NEXRAD obviously didn't, even on-board radar wouldn't have - Radar depends on precip, and there's no precip early on. A stormscope might have shown some electrical activity, but maybe not.

I think Lance is right on the money:

It is very unwise to penetrate a TS in IMC conditions. Getting down below the bases in VMC is often a good tactic. If this is too low for ATC, then go VFR. The alternative is to deviate. You may have to fly quite a ways off course sometimes, but that's the way it is.

It's always safest to stay visual, but the time may come when you end up in what ATC calls "heavy to extreme precipitation". Slow down to Va, have the pitot heat on, keep the wings level, don't worry about altitude deviations so much as airspeed, scan-scan-scan. The rain will be loud. It will be turbulent. Assuming you didn't get yourself in a real higher level TS like Scott Crossfield did, your smaller single engine plane can handle it, but it may not be much fun.

 

[Addicted2climbing]

I got caught in a thunderstorm flying a Blanik L13 Glider around 1995. I was flying out of California City and could see the gust front pounding a line in the desert and it was moving onto the airport. I was half way between Cal City and Mojave and would not make it to the airport before the front. I called Joshua Approach and asked if it was OK for me to cross the barrier that put me in the airspace for edwards AFB due to the storm over California City. I got the OK and managed to stay clear of the storm to wait it out. I had a Nimbus 4 and a Grob 102 with me in the same thermal and we were all waiting it out. After 30 minutes or so, the Grob 102 and Nimbus decided to try and make it to Tehachapi and myself being in a low performance Blanik decided to hang out and wait longer. I chose to only use mojave as a last ditch option as I was told at the time if I landed there it would result in a declaration of emergency which I wanted to avoid. However thinking back now, I am curious if what I was told was true. Also I only had a student certificate as well. Lift was good enough that I could stay up without much trouble, but the clouds were getting thicker and I had to land soon. Also it was bout 30 minutes to sunset. I noticed that the gust front had moved past the airport and was now pounding the town, so I called ahead to the FBO to let them know I was finally returning to the airport, but the winds were strong enough that I would need people to catch my wings as I rolled up. As I entered the 45 to the airport, the wind was the strongest I had ever been in and it was pouring rain. As I turned final I had almost a 90 degree crosswind and somewhere near 30kts of wind. I was freaked out to say the least. Somehow I was focused enough to get the thing on the ground, roll up to my awaiting wing walkers and they grabbed my wings and brought me to the tie downs while I remained inside. They were soaked and I now owed them dinner.

After buttoning up the glider I made my way back to the hanger only to find that the Grob 102 outlanded in the desert in a place that required dissasembly and the Nimbus also did not make it to tehachapi and turned back and landed at Mojave. I dont think the nimbus 4 could have landed in a cross wind that severe at Cal City with its long wingspan.

I was the only one to make it home that day. To date that is my biggest puckering moment in aviation with a second being in a Hanglider.

Marc

 

[jonnyjetprop]

I've done it flying FAR 135 cargo at night. Not fun at all.