New England Weather STUCK

This will be the third weekend in a row that we've wanted to fly to our cottage in Maine and open it up for the season, but weather has killed the idea. We can go IFR, but who wants to rake leaves in the rain?

Dan
 
I know - this is depressing and ridiculous. I got up briefly last weekend, but I can't handle much more of this! It's been raining for as long as I remember and the forecast shows rain as far out as it goes? What the hell...??
 
BillG said:
I know - this is depressing and ridiculous. I got up briefly last weekend, but I can't handle much more of this! It's been raining for as long as I remember and the forecast shows rain as far out as it goes? What the hell...??
Click to expand...

Yeah, and the latest ETA model run looks terrible for flying this weekend. Maybe sunday, but I doubt it.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss the 87F and humid of Nixa.

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
Andrew, what is that graphic you posted?

Gonna have to change your sig - no "cheer" here!
 
BillG said:
Andrew, what is that graphic you posted?

Gonna have to change your sig - no "cheer" here!
Click to expand...

That was the model overview from BUFKIT, the NWS' WDTB model visualization tool. You download model files for the major models (NGM, ETA, ETAM, GFS3) and this tool produces lots of weather visualizations of the model data. In the overview you see:

Heavy blue line - read on the left side scale, visibility
Heavy green line - apparent temp, at the surface for the station selected (in this case, KORH)
Heavy white veritcal line - current date/time on the chart (since the models can be up to 6-8 hours old)
White / Grey / Slashed boxes - cloud cover, and I forget how to read the cloud type. Thickness is on the right side, the left-most scale of the 3.
Light colored contour lines - Temperature at altitude.
Green bars - Precipitation (in this case, rain), read from the right side, middle key.

Graph is read from right to left. I've found that using this tool is priceless - compare the major models (short term - RUC, NGM; long term ETA and GFS) and figure out what I think the weather is going to. It's not exact, I'm not always right, but this gives you a level of detail in such a beautiful fashion that it really gives a lot of insight into how the weather is going to evolve. A good FSS briefing, a visit to ADDS, and this tool are about as valuable to flight planning as one could possibly get.

And your tax dollars paid for this tool (to be used by the National Weather Service), and the NWS is giving it back to the public. How novel.

http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/tools/BUFKIT/index.html

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
Dan Smith said:
This will be the third weekend in a row that we've wanted to fly to our cottage in Maine and open it up for the season, but weather has killed the idea. We can go IFR, but who wants to rake leaves in the rain?

Dan
Click to expand...

And there are flood advisories for the Kennebec and Presumpscot Rivers(and others), according to Weather Bug. Back on the 15th we didn't land at Bowdoinham(below) because it was still a bit soft. As of today, soft would not be the proper description. It may be 68MSL but Merrymeeting Bay(not far off the end of #32) may be rising.

HR
 
Gonna cast my fate from S37 to Rutland VT tomorrow anyway. The early tafs are making it look like we can get to ALB VFR. That is XC and hood time for my wife. After that, it will either clear out en route and we can VFR into the hills, or we will file and fly. As long as the temps stay above where they were on Tuesday, when you all had enough pireps for icing to cover the map throughout New England :hairraise:

So, when does summer, with it's good, hazy, VFR weather come, anyway?

Jim G
 
SEA to EWR tomorrow, but that's Continental's problem. Tuesday is JFK-DFW-GRU (arriving Wednesday). Then the other airport in Sao Paulo to Brasilia. Next Friday evening is Brasilia-GRU-DFW-SEA. Are we having fun yet? Needless to say, this isn't a GA trip. At least not my flavor of GA!
 
astanley said:
That was the model overview from BUFKIT, the NWS' WDTB model visualization tool. You download model files for the major models (NGM, ETA, ETAM, GFS3) and this tool produces lots of weather visualizations of the model data. In the overview you see:

Heavy blue line - read on the left side scale, visibility
Heavy green line - apparent temp, at the surface for the station selected (in this case, KORH)
Heavy white veritcal line - current date/time on the chart (since the models can be up to 6-8 hours old)
White / Grey / Slashed boxes - cloud cover, and I forget how to read the cloud type. Thickness is on the right side, the left-most scale of the 3.
Light colored contour lines - Temperature at altitude.
Green bars - Precipitation (in this case, rain), read from the right side, middle key.

Graph is read from right to left. I've found that using this tool is priceless - compare the major models (short term - RUC, NGM; long term ETA and GFS) and figure out what I think the weather is going to. It's not exact, I'm not always right, but this gives you a level of detail in such a beautiful fashion that it really gives a lot of insight into how the weather is going to evolve. A good FSS briefing, a visit to ADDS, and this tool are about as valuable to flight planning as one could possibly get.

And your tax dollars paid for this tool (to be used by the National Weather Service), and the NWS is giving it back to the public. How novel.

http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/tools/BUFKIT/index.html

Cheers,

-Andrew
Click to expand...


Yeah, I'm an idiot. Those contoured colored lines? That is windspeed at altitude. I just noticed that, I don't know why I thought it was temp.
 
This weather is confusing to say the least. I'd supposed to fly up to KPVC on Cape Cod on Saturday from the Philly area and back on Monday. Don't know if it will be possible. Today in the Philly area it went from low ceilings and rain to sunny and then cloudy with in two hours. I'm worried about it looking good and then closing in on me. That Low looks like it is camped out in New England for a while. Sigh!
 
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