Weather Diverts

[knolde]

Afternoon All: Recently Nancy and I had to divert for weather coming home from Miami to home in Pensacola. This is normally a 5 or so hour flight (500nm)so you have to be careful about the weather. We refueled at Sebring and were cruising at 8500 and the weather was as forcast, beautiful and only light winds at altitude. clear Just passing Panama City (PFN)the Destin ATIS was reporing severe clear; I tuned in Navy Sherman ATIS (5mn from home base)and I was shoocked that they were reporting a 300' ceiling. Then I heard Pensacola Regional reporting 600'ceiling. I did see lower clouds, but nothing/nothing on the GPS weather. So we descended down to 2500' and as we went along, I could see the ground through the many layers. I tried to get Regional to let me in for a look--naw. So we went to an alternate and this was the first divert from home in quite a while. Moral of the story is that weather has many faces and you can be surprised as we were--XM Weather is not perfect and we diverted without problem. One passing note, ATC gets goosey as the ceiling goes down and they thought my trying to take a look was an "emergency" situation, notwithstanding having 3 hours ao fuel on board. So diverting happens at odd times, be prepared.

 

See Ya, Ken Nolde 840KN

[207WF]

Nick:

 

My experience in SoCal has so far been that XM never depicts fog. A high overcast with virga, yes. WF

[207WF]

Sorry, Ken. WF

[johngpilot]

Ken

Your last statement about plenty of fuel is in my opinion one of the best selling reasons for th 34 Gallon tank in the CT. I am of the opinion that you can never have "too much" fuel. Glad it worked out. Good advice on the XM and fog.. You have to watch the METARS, I make it a habit to watch the temp/dew point spread. Close spreads lead to fast fog once that sun sets.

[coppercity]

The XM weather is great, but the refresh rate on Metars is only once an hour so a lot can change during that time. The nice thing is you can look well ahead during your trip and watch the trends. There is no substitute for good aeronautical decision making based on what you see with your eyes though!

[S3flyer]

I agree XM Weather is just another great safety tool to have if you do more than just fly around the patch. Recently I was flying back from the Florida panhandle to Dallas with my prefered (direct) route taking me through south-central MS and northern LA into TX. Unfortunately, one of our seemingly weekly solid wall of thunderstorms was due to work through TX, then move ENE through N LA (extending for 100's of miles north) and work it's way across the middle of the country. The weather was fine for the first 40% of the trip but forecast to be scattered T-storms around my planned first stop with solid coverage all the way to Dallas. It would take around 2 days for the front to clear out of my normal routes. We decided we really didn't want to wait 2 days so we plotted a southern route that had no forecast of T-storms or more than 20% chance of showers with forecast ceilings 5K or greater. We did not plan to make it to Dallas either but fly to Baton Rouge, let the front pass, the tool into Dallas the following day.

 

As we got close to LA, small showers started popping up north of us on XM. Cloud base was still fine and the sky was scattered to broken. Easy to see as well as observe showers on XM and do minor course deviations. Still more sunshine than clouds. Showers started becoming more plentiful 25 miles from BTR, flight following was also advising us as more intense cells start poping up. It was nice to have both onboard 'radar' as well as real-time updates from center. Long story short, it was straight forward to navigate to BTR without even getting the plane wet or go below 2K AGL. We also had safe alternatives to the south at any time.

 

Of course, the next day we had LIFR for most of the day and didn't get out until nearly 5pm. But not a blip on XM Weather could be found