Deviating T Storms at night

RyanB

RyanB

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Talking about airliners and high alt operations. When flying at night at lower altitudes and up in the flight levels, how are T Storms avoided? I know airliners have onboard wx radar so they can obviously see the cells and avoid them as needed, but at night they see the radar scope but they cant see the towering cumulonimbus's to deviate around. Say they see the radar during the day and look out the window and see the towers infront, they can deviate to avoid the storm and the towering cume's, but not so much at night. How do they know they are avoiding the cume's and staying clear, how is this done?
 
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My solution for GA is to not accept the flight. I've turned down some 135 flights because of the combination of night and thunderstorms. I will not fly when embedded thunderstorms are forecast unless I can be assured by pilot reports that I can get on top...

Airlines have much more sophisticated means of detecting and avoiding thunderstorms plus they can fly really, really high compared to the rest of us.

Bob Gardner
 
bobmrg said:
My solution for GA is to not accept the flight. I've turned down some 135 flights because of the combination of night and thunderstorms. I will not fly when embedded thunderstorms are forecast unless I can be assured by pilot reports that I can get on top...

Airlines have much more sophisticated means of detecting and avoiding thunderstorms plus they can fly really, really high compared to the rest of us.

Bob Gardner
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I agree, as for the airliners, they can fly at high altitudes say FL350+ but with some T storms, they can tower up to FL400 for example. They see the radar and the cell but how do they know they are deviating around the tops and not through it since its at night. Only thing i can think of is ATC advises tops to FL400 for that storm etc.
 
Ryanb said:
I agree, as for the airliners, they can fly at high altitudes say FL350+ but with some T storms, they can tower up to FL400 for example. They see the radar and the cell but how do they know they are deviating around the tops and not through it since its at night. Only thing i can think of is ATC advises tops to FL400 for that storm etc.
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Infrared satellite radar is one way. The taller the cloud, the colder it is, generally speaking.
 
Ryanb said:
I agree, as for the airliners, they can fly at high altitudes say FL350+ but with some T storms, they can tower up to FL400 for example. They see the radar and the cell but how do they know they are deviating around the tops and not through it since its at night. Only thing i can think of is ATC advises tops to FL400 for that storm etc.
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See what's on the radar, don't go where there is a storm. What I fly is limited to FL350, which doesn't do us a lot of favors, but we still get around weather fine.
 
No way I'm going up. Not even IFR knowing ctr will vector me. If it's pop up stuff, I'd have to work around it and hope ATc Has my back. But I'm not going up knowing storms are near my route.
 
If on top, there are these things called stars. Where there's no stars, there's clouds. Some made of water, some made of stone.
 
Night Vision Goggles come in handy for that ;-)
 
EdFred said:
If on top, there are these things called stars. Where there's no stars, there's clouds. Some made of water, some made of stone.
Click to expand...

And I will garun*******tee you that the blackness of rock will scare the livin' **** out of you. It's just nothingness. Gimmee a road with traffic and I'm fine but mountains at night are purty scary.
 
We use the radar to avoid the storms like you mentioned. Anything up in the 30s should show up but sometimes don't because they can be mostly ice. In the teens, well, sometimes you just plow through the towering cumulus.

Also helps to turn the cockpit lights down and let the lightning illuminate things for you. Just stay away from the red on the radar. Red is bad.
 
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As I have made my living for the last 28 years flying mainly at night, and despite what a spokesman from my company told the NTSB that there was less weather at night, I have had to deviate around thunderstorms, fly through stuff that I wish I hadn't due to the limitations of the equipment etc. There is an old saying about airborne radar...one peek is worth a thousand sweeps. We try our best to avoid the build ups but when a cell is dying and at high altitude it is made up of mainly ice crystals (but NOT ALWAYS) which do not reflect the radar beam. New generation radars are not as good as the old kinds that would alter your gene structure if it was left powered on the ground. I have gone high, I have gone a LONG way around, I have gritted my teeth and held on and wondered at why I chose this profession. The very best weather radar interpreter I ever flew with was an old Braniff Captain. He had a knack for where it was flyable and not. Learned a lot from him. For instance, flying level at 370 and the weather ahead was springtime Kansas/Nebraska storms that stretched from Minnesota to Mexico. He played with the radar, looked out the window and told me to ask for FL180, we did and flew under the anvils until on the other side of the line...ATC said we were the only plane that didn't deviate and we didn't get a bump or drop on us.
Most airliners have less electronic equipment than a lot of the newer GA airplanes. XM weather and the ability to pull up and look at the overall stuff is not available to me in my airliner.
 
Clark1961 said:
And I will garun*******tee you that the blackness of rock will scare the livin' **** out of you. It's just nothingness. Gimmee a road with traffic and I'm fine but mountains at night are purty scary.
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I can believe that.
 
XM/ADS-B weather has made a huge difference in ability to fly at night in the presence of thunderstorms. Used correctly, that, on-board radar, and a stormscope keep me generally satisfied. I really don't make much of a distinction with night vs day in that regard provided I have that equipment capability.
 
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Trying to top the weather, say going to 390, 400 or higher if possible is one way to stay out of the tops and bumps. Radar is another tool of course. If they're scattered, then most of the time you can see the thunderstorms from the lightning strikes lighting them up. If they're embedded and the tops are inside that uniform fuzzy cloud base then it's much harder to see the individual ones, again radar is a good tool. Asking center where others have deviated through and the rides they had through that section. Using moonlight and the stars above are all tools to use at night too.
 
Champ Driver
Good points and all used at some point but when you have cells that go to 50K plus...
Weight of the aircraft will cause you to have to stay down in the stuff sometimes.

Avoiding turbulence is a totally subjective subject. Turbulence that will cause a plane carrying passengers to be changing altitudes will only cause a freighter to look up for a second and then go back to reading his flight manual or company operations manual :yikes:
 
Knowing how to use the radar is everything. There use to be videos put out by (Archie Trammel ? ) and how to use the radar effectively.

One area I notice a lot of pilots inappropriately using the radar is not adjusting the tilt. In convective weather raising and lowering the tilt will give a good idea of the size of a storm, and by tilting down will give a good picture of a storm beneath you.
 
Very good advice here guys. I have done the Archie Trammel videos and the guy from the old TWA. Tilt and looking out the window and then at the radar to see what it looks like are your friends. Interpretation starts with tilt.



RotorAndWing said:
Knowing how to use the radar is everything. There use to be videos put out by (Archie Trammel ? ) and how to use the radar effectively.

One area I notice a lot of pilots inappropriately using the radar is not adjusting the tilt. In convective weather raising and lowering the tilt will give a good idea of the size of a storm, and by tilting down will give a good picture of a storm beneath you.
Click to expand...
 
RotorAndWing said:
Knowing how to use the radar is everything. There use to be videos put out by (Archie Trammel ? ) and how to use the radar effectively.

One area I notice a lot of pilots inappropriately using the radar is not adjusting the tilt. In convective weather raising and lowering the tilt will give a good idea of the size of a storm, and by tilting down will give a good picture of a storm beneath you.
Click to expand...


^^ This
 
MD11Pilot said:
As I have made my living for the last 28 years flying mainly at night, and despite what a spokesman from my company told the NTSB that there was less weather at night, I have had to deviate around thunderstorms, fly through stuff that I wish I hadn't due to the limitations of the equipment etc. There is an old saying about airborne radar...one peek is worth a thousand sweeps. We try our best to avoid the build ups but when a cell is dying and at high altitude it is made up of mainly ice crystals (but NOT ALWAYS) which do not reflect the radar beam. New generation radars are not as good as the old kinds that would alter your gene structure if it was left powered on the ground. I have gone high, I have gone a LONG way around, I have gritted my teeth and held on and wondered at why I chose this profession. The very best weather radar interpreter I ever flew with was an old Braniff Captain. He had a knack for where it was flyable and not. Learned a lot from him. For instance, flying level at 370 and the weather ahead was springtime Kansas/Nebraska storms that stretched from Minnesota to Mexico. He played with the radar, looked out the window and told me to ask for FL180, we did and flew under the anvils until on the other side of the line...ATC said we were the only plane that didn't deviate and we didn't get a bump or drop on us.
Most airliners have less electronic equipment than a lot of the newer GA airplanes. XM weather and the ability to pull up and look at the overall stuff is not available to me in my airliner.
Click to expand...

less wx at night... LOL
 
How many Archie Trammel videos are out there? I have a great old one on vcr but wonder what ones I've missed.
 
EdFred said:
If on top, there are these things called stars. Where there's no stars, there's clouds. Some made of water, some made of stone.
Click to expand...

I like that.
 
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