Sunday, July 08, 2007




It's Summer, and that means thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are the only weather-related thing in aviation that really makes me sweat. I guess I'm still a little gun-shy.

I took this video a couple of days ago, on the climbout to our destination. The lightning detector told us that the cel on the left would be a bad place to fly near, so we kept our distance. The bright sun made it impossible to see the lightning flashes, but they were there - the lightning detector showed dozens and dozens of strikes every 5 minutes. We skirted around it and landed uneventfully, cheating death again to fly another day ;)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was that a tie?

Sulako said...

Heh yeah it was. We were on a charter flight, and for charters we have to wear the pilot shirt, epaulets, tie, etc.

Wearing a tie on charters is easily the worst part of my entire job :)

John Schlosser said...

Was that just wind noise in the video because it seemed loud. Also, what are you recording with?

Aluwings said...

I just linked back to read your earlier story of the T-storm encounter. When you wrote: "...we started seeing heavier rain hit the front cockpit windows." and you were at 30,000 feet I stiffened in my chair. That can't be good!

After working with weather radar for thirty years, I've always wished my employer had added the stormscope. In many situations wx. radar is almost useless and I suspect the scope would be a better indicator.

Good job surviving the encounter! Thanks for sharing.