Bad weather briefs

redlineshifts said:
My interpretation was due to lack of knowledge of some tools that were available.

Airmets and sigmets did not provide an accurate picture of the act actual conditions.

Realizing that we were picking up ice and the pitot failing were almost simultaneous. Believe me when I say it all happened very quickly. The pitot heat worked on preflight. I have learned a lot from this experience. Hopefully someone else can learn from my mistakes.
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It may still be working but simply not up to dealing with the serious icing you encountered. From the pictures I'd say you had an up front and personal lesson on SLD, and fortunately you get to put this experience to good use since you managed to live through it.

FWIW, it sounds to me like you managed the situation fairly well with the possible exception of not hightailing it out of the clouds and ice as soon as possible once it was obvious that ice was present. You are going to experience unexpected adverse weather again if you keep flying in IMC and it's important to have an exit strategy (e.g. plan B) whenever that's a possibility.

Scott D has been providing you with some useful tools and I think you'd find his workshop program fairly useful.
 
Alexb2000 said:
+1. Some areas are not covered at all by a Skew-t sounding anyway.
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The soundings (rawinsondes) are merely the raw point measurements upon which the models interpolate and extrapolate and Scott correct me please if I don't have this right, but the models such as op40 and the new ruc model have complete coverage of the lower 48.
 
JHW said:
have you fixed the pitot heat yet ? Sometimes you can change the elements in the piper's without getting a while new mast
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Almost always I's the ground wire...go into the inspection panel, feel around for a loose wire on the bottom wing skin near the pitot tube...rub the connection with some scotch brite and hook it to the inspection panel ...also and I mentioned this earlier...do poke a flash light up at your defrost vents under the panel...I'll almost bet the 1 inch scat tube is missing or very compromised .
 
DrMack said:
The soundings (rawinsondes) are merely the raw point measurements upon which the models interpolate and extrapolate and Scott correct me please if I don't have this right, but the models such as op40 and the new ruc model have complete coverage of the lower 48.
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Unless I missed it meteorologist take soundings from certain places in the U.S. twice a day and then extrapolate other areas and forecast from there. Take NM, the soundings are taken from Albuquerque, but for those of us in NE NM it is a different weather pattern. I personally will look at a skew-t, but if conditions are challenging I'm not going to launch into IMC with icing potential on the basis of it or any forecasting tool. I want a pirep from my departure airport at the time of departure.
 
scottd said:
It seems that many pilots believe that you can only get Skew-T diagrams from locations that launch a rawinsonde. :mad2:

But, you are correct. Numerical weather prediction models will provide an analysis and forecast that has a fairly high resolution of 20 km or less in some cases. Therefore, you can get a forecast sounding or analysis any place in the U.S. Moreover, the new RAP model gets you coverage over all of North America.
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I believe you can only get raw data from a rawisonde. Why would that make you mad?

If it is not true that the rest of the data is interpolated, then please correct me. I also gave an example in NM, where I feel the raw data is too different from the mountain weather to be trusted.

Are you willing to bet your life on interpolated data taken a couple of hundred miles from where you are actually flying?
 
scottd said:
Yes, you are missing something. Forecasters do launch weather balloons twice a day (sometimes more frequent) from various locations around the country. They don't just "extrapolate" this data to other locations. The rawinsonde data along with hundreds of thousands of other data elements get ingested into forecast models that produce an hourly analysis and a suite of hourly forecasts. The rawinsondes represent good data, but it's actually quite a small component.

Nobody is encouraging you to launch into IMC with icing potential...ever. But the tools are useful to identify the potential for icing even when there is no official forecast (AIRMET) for it. It's a great tool (integrated with others) that prevents the situation that happened to the OP. I have never, ever suggested to use a Skew-T to fly in the ice. That would be STUPID.

Be careful. PIREPs can lie. I don't trust them unless they really match what I'm seeing with the other guidance.
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What actual data do meteorologist gather from NE NM?
 
scottd said:
Yes, you are missing something. Forecasters do launch weather balloons twice a day (sometimes more frequent) from various locations around the country. They don't just "extrapolate" this data to other locations. The rawinsonde data along with hundreds of thousands of other data elements get ingested into forecast models that produce an hourly analysis and a suite of hourly forecasts. The rawinsondes represent good data, but it's actually quite a small component.

Nobody is encouraging you to launch into IMC with icing potential...ever. But the tools are useful to identify the potential for icing even when there is no official forecast (AIRMET) for it. It's a great tool (integrated with others) that prevents the situation that happened to the OP. I have never, ever suggested to use a Skew-T to fly in the ice. That would be STUPID.

Be careful. PIREPs can lie. I don't trust them unless they really match what I'm seeing with the other guidance.
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Scott, I haven't started my instrument rating yet (just doing some home studying). I have your Beyond The Weather Brief course and I must admit, weather is one of my weak points.

Quick question about your Skew-T course. Will it teach me step by step how to read and interpret everything on the chart ( I have no idea what I'm looking at) and most of all, how to put that knowledge to practical use, even now as a VFR pilot? Do I need a membership or just a one time purchase?

Thank you.
 
scottd said:
Where do I start? With respect to numerical weather prediction, the data assimilation phase is perhaps the most important and most complex portion of the process. It chews up more CPU cycles than the forecast portion. That's because it has to ingest thousands of data items, most of which pilots have never heard of. Moreover, the number of different kinds of available observations continues to grow.

What happens over NE NM in six hours is largely what's going on upstream. So, it's less important what's occurring right over this area. In fact, a small area such as this is really not relevant to the forecast process. It's like dropping a small rock in a raging river.

Here are just a a small list of the kinds of observations ingested into the models...

Commercial aircraft (including moisture data from WVSS-II sensors)

Wind profilers

VAD (velocity-azimuth display) winds from NWS WSR-88D radars

RASS (Radio Acoustic Sounding System)

Rawinsondes and special dropwinsondes

Radar reflectivity (3-d)

Surface reporting stations and buoys (including cloud, visibility, current weather)

Mesonet

AMSU-A/B satellite radiances

GOES satellite radiances

GPS total precipitable water estimates

GOES cloud-top data (pressure and temperature)

GOES high-density visible and IR cloud drift winds

Lightning - defer to RAPv2 (used in ESRL RAP since Jan 2012)

Special wind-energy observations
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Scott-

I appreciate what you guys do and get unbelievable value from the weather tools we have. I shared my reservations about certain areas (like NE NM) where the mountains certainly effect the weather at the lower altitudes I fly because that's what my experience has been. There have been days the weather was forecast as clear, the airport reporting clear and light winds, and I'm sitting in white out conditions 5 miles away. For the most part the best weather tool has been my eyes, but maybe I'm just a simpleton pilot.
 
Holy hell! I'm glad you're still with us and you learned a lesson. That's the most ice I've ever seen on a piston pounder...Thank you for sharing with us though, really. Stay safe out there!
 
scottd said:
Where do I start? With respect to numerical weather prediction, the data assimilation phase is perhaps the most important and most complex portion of the process. It chews up more CPU cycles than the forecast portion. That's because it has to ingest thousands of data items, most of which pilots have never heard of. Moreover, the number of different kinds of available observations continues to grow.

What happens over NE NM in six hours is largely what's going on upstream. So, it's less important what's occurring right over this area. In fact, a small area such as this is really not relevant to the forecast process. It's like dropping a small rock in a raging river.

Here are just a a small list of the kinds of observations ingested into the models...

Commercial aircraft (including moisture data from WVSS-II sensors)

Wind profilers

VAD (velocity-azimuth display) winds from NWS WSR-88D radars

RASS (Radio Acoustic Sounding System)

Rawinsondes and special dropwinsondes

Radar reflectivity (3-d)

Surface reporting stations and buoys (including cloud, visibility, current weather)

Mesonet

AMSU-A/B satellite radiances

GOES satellite radiances

GPS total precipitable water estimates

GOES cloud-top data (pressure and temperature)

GOES high-density visible and IR cloud drift winds

Lightning - defer to RAPv2 (used in ESRL RAP since Jan 2012)

Special wind-energy observations
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You obviously know nothing about meteorology.

[Insert a big I'M KIDDING emoticon here!]
 
No one has answered my question about how good is a full-FIKI SR22 in ice.

Any takers?
 
Title of this post made me think this way:
 

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scottd said:
It does very well. The most serious icing situation is that of runback ice. This is common with encounters like the OP experienced. With boots, you can't remove this ice, but TKS systems like are on the Cirrus are great at keeping the surfaces well behind the leading edges quite clean.
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That's good to know! By any chance do you know the differences between the inadvertent-ice SR22 and the full FIKI SR22?

I fly an SR20, and that has no hope of anything more than simple pitot heat, and I respect the fact that the high speed wing on the SR20 does not like ice.
 
scottd said:
The most important difference is the flight testing in actual icing conditions.
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True in the case of the Mooney system - extra pumps and certification work. In the case of the Cirrus the two systems aren't close. The holes in the panels and the flow rates are different between the two. The tanks are much larger on the FIKI system and they have gauges. The pumps are redundant on the FIKI system. There is a panel on the vertical stabilizer on the FIKI system. The FIKI system has an ice light system to allow seeing ice at night. The stall warning port is different on the FIKI and is heated. On the FIKI the elevator horns have panels to prevent ice bridging causing the elevator to freeze into position. This was the result of several years of testing. Apparently the FAA was very picky with Cirrus and there were lots of changes along the way. The good news is that, from all I have heard, it works extremely well. One more thing, the FIKI has sprayers for the windscreen. The inadvertent system depends on the prop slinger.
 
peppy said:
True in the case of the Mooney system - extra pumps and certification work. In the case of the Cirrus the two systems aren't close. The holes in the panels and the flow rates are different between the two. The tanks are much larger on the FIKI system and they have gauges. The pumps are redundant on the FIKI system. There is a panel on the vertical stabilizer on the FIKI system. The FIKI system has an ice light system to allow seeing ice at night. The stall warning port is different on the FIKI and is heated. On the FIKI the elevator horns have panels to prevent ice bridging causing the elevator to freeze into position. This was the result of several years of testing. Apparently the FAA was very picky with Cirrus and there were lots of changes along the way. The good news is that, from all I have heard, it works extremely well. One more thing, the FIKI has sprayers for the windscreen. The inadvertent system depends on the prop slinger.
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Sounds great. Wish I had $600k, and I'd get it!
 
I'm very glad you're still alive. I'm also glad you weren't afraid to share the story.
 
Thanks for sharing the pics and story, and thanks to the rest of the folks for the discussion. I shared this thread at our flying club meeting last night for a safety discussion on flight planning.
 
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