Sudden High Wind not in any forecast

scottd said:
You are correct. Nobody knows the future for certain. The forecaster's job is to quantify uncertainty and that's ultimately the product we will use to make our weather-related decisions.
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Scott - weird one today. Flying in the mid Atlantic area. Surface winds at my departure and destination airports are light and variable. The winds aloft report showed at 3k they are 160/36 knots and were still over 20 at pattern altitude according to my Aspen (I had to compensate for a 90 crosswind drift on downwind). No turbulence from pattern to surface but when 500 feet above ground level, I can tell the wind is gone. What causes this?
 
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Marauder said:
Scott - weird one today. Flying in the mid Atlantic area. Surface winds at my departure and destination airports are light and variable. The winds aloft report showed at 3k they are 160/36 knots and were still over 20 at pattern altitude according to my Aspen (I had to compensate for a 90 crosswind drift on downwind). No turbulence from pattern to surface but when 500 feet above ground level, I can tell the wind is gone. What causes this?
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Possibly that warm front moving over you today? Inversion? This can also happen at night or early morning.
 
RV10flyer said:
Possibly that warm front moving over you today? Inversion? This can also happen at night or early morning.
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The flight started at 5:30 EDT and landing was a little before 6. I have encountered shear conditions where winds aloft are different on the ground, but never seen such a strong wind literally within 500 feet of the ground and absolute calm on the surface. When I landed, nothing was moving due to wind. It was the weirdest situation I have seen in my 30 years of flying. Just curious what meteorological condition existed at the time.
 
I flew the morning after last years deadly tornadoes. It was 5 kts on the ground and 60 kts at 1000' AGL at 7 AM with a few clouds. This was forecast to mix down to the ground by 11 AM. I was returning to land at 10 AM with 25 Kt direct xw. I think we had about 25-30 degrees of correction in.
 
scottd said:
It's called non-convective low level wind shear as I describe in this workshop.

You mentioned in another post that it was 5:30 - 6:00...am or pm? What airport?
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Hi Scott. It was 5:30pm. The airport was S37, just outside of Lancaster PA. I have been around wind shear, but I guess I live a sheltered life -- I never experienced one that low to the ground before with that much of a contrast in wind speed (the Aspen was showing it in the 20 to 25 knot range at about 500 feet AGL. Like I mentioned, the surface was calmer than calm. It was just weird not encountering any wind on the ground and so much just above.
 
I believe it was Mark Twain who said "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it."

A related idea is NOAA forecasts the weather but it up to the pilot to decide what to do.

Forecast last night for today was winds around 20, gusts to 25 and actuals were 25, gusts to 35 and 35, gusts to 40. I stayed home. ;)

Cheers
 
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