Got Rid of my MIL today - busted forecast coming home

[comanchepilot]

<cross posted to the Red Board>

The forecast today was for SCT - BKN from 3000 - 5000. The Skew-T was showing tops around 6000-7000 - with the freezing leveling right in the top 1000 feet of the clouds. Prime set up for icing. The Skew-T also showed the bottom 6000 feet being pretty unstable.

My mother in law wanted to go visit her friends in Desert Center and whom am I to deny her a trip away from home. . . .

Woke up and saw the skies mostly CLR. Scattered over the hills - all of them. Its less than 10 days to the winter solstice with the weakest sunlight of the year. - so there is a limited amount of insolation available for stimulating cloud development. another storm was forecast to come in off the Pacific this evening - I only needed 2-3 hours to get the MIL delivery done - so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Photos below detail the conditions at departure . ..

Bases were about 3000FEW, the tops were right where the Skew-T told them to be - at 6000 and I climbed out to 7500 and headed east to Banning Pass. Light Winds forecast in the pass and aloft meaning I was not expecting much in the way of turbulence. . .

Freezing level was about 5700. As I approached the pass the winds picked up and I was showing 188kts ground speed at the peak. Thats pretty good.

ALso photos are of the trip out.

It cleared right at the eastern end of the Pass where the wind farms are. Nice pix of Mr. San Jacinto.

Just after the photo there was pretty continuous moderate chop all the way down to the ground . . . so the low winds did not forecast a smoooth ride but the MIL was ok with - dropped her off - and had an adventure coming home -

 

[comanchepilot]

Part 2 -

Here are some pix of the entry into the desert . . . .

That's Mt San Jacinto and the hill with sun is Mt. San Gorgornio . . .

The LAST pix was taken from 10,500.

I was 7500 initially and needed to climb to 9500 as I approached the pass - there was a Cirrus behind me - and I was pulling away from it - loved it!

I heard a couple of airplanes on frequency in the pass - under the clouds having trouble at 3500 staying VFR - the pass is at 2100 feet- prob lots of pucker factor there -

anyway - next post has the trip back - lots of ADM .. .

 

[comanchepilot]

Ok, coming back. The sky over me right now is OVC as I sit here typing this - we've had an instability rain shower. Tops are being reported still at 10,000. I took off from L77 and it was actually pretty decent on the climbout - winds were getting gusty at the surface despite the forecast at PSP for calm winds during the day. So the forecast was gone and I was about to find out how gone . . .

I climbed to 8500 and it had smoothed out dramatically - we had +/-20 degree heading deflections east of the pass in turbulence - not much in the way of wave - more like getting shoved left and right and not up and down. But the trip back less than 45 min later all that was gone and all I was seeing was the usual 'desert wiggle.'

As I got west of PSP VOR I saw that I needed to climb so I went to 10500 - and as I came through the pass there was not a break in the clouds anywhere - it was pretty solid with bigger build ups up against the mountains. The forecast was pretty much completely blown - with BKN to OVC all across the southland. While I am IFR rated, current and flew 2 approaches in the last month, it was -10C outside at 10,500, with at least 5000 feet of wet Pacific clouds to descend through.

I was scrolling through the METAR's from my Stratus - and ONT was reporting 25,000SCT - so there were a few breaks ahead. I could see the ocean was clear - this was an instability event - and it was alot more unstable than forecast. I had 3 hours of gas so if push came to shove I could turn around, and land back at PSP. I was really surprised at the diurnal instability since here we are 7 days away from the winter Solstice with the weakest sunlight of the year - not much in the way of being able to 'stimulate' unstable air - when I got back I looked the Skew-T and the instability, CAPE, LI are off the charts now - completely different from the forecast sounding when I left.

I grabbed the METAR from POC and heard it was 6000SCT - so the clouds were roughly 4-5000 feet thick and the freezing level now was closer to the bases. I know that if I kept coming west I could find a hole or lead [polynya for the submariners out there] and either spiral or simply go to ONT and descend through that hole - at least that was the plan.

I kept heading west looking for a hole and was not finding anything flyable, much less legal [1-2-3 right?] to descend through until I got close to Corona - there in the lee of Santiago Peak near Lake Elsinore was about a 5x4 mile area of clear - there was the place to descend - unfortunately - it was occupied with jumpers - so I needed to coordinate with SoCal on getting down - not a major delay but a couple of minutes of flying a racetrack while the jumpers and jump plane.

I used this time to ask the Controller about Pireps in the clouds. He told me that he'd ask around. I then heard a Delta flight check in on the Kayoh arrival into SNA and he reported light-moderate rime between 6000 and 10,000 in the clouds. I rather suspected that these clouds would be ice producers - the controller came back and asked me if I had a request - he did not want to report icing conditions.

Prior to this I had I asked him for an IFR clearance at 5000 feet to Brackett as soon as I got the descent clearance . . . he rattled off a "cleared Brackett Airport - at 5000 feet maintain heading of 350, cleared direct PRADO report direct PRADO. Maintain 5000. You are cleared for a VFR descent at this time . . . "

I cranked the bank angle to about 40 degrees and went to just about idle and brought it down at 1500 fpm and rolled out direct Prado and entered the clouds - and the clouds were closing in again. That hole was now only maybe 2x3. Temps in clear air was about 2C but the temp the cloud was hovering right around 0C. I was picking up a little wet and then a little rime and then a little wet as I moved through the clouds at 140kts. I was cleared pretty quickly to 4000. and inside PRADO on the approach I broke out at about 3700. It was hazy, cloudy, with virga everywhere. I got to Brackett and the skies were clear - you could see a ring of clouds all around you.

So anyway - this was one of those situations where the forecast was broken and having the on board weather - either ADS-B or XM - allowed it to work just fine. The fact that I had taken off and left the area about 90 min earlier meant that I had an actual freezing level and knew where it was -

I have no pictures of the flight back - the trip in the desert was waiting to get banged around which never happened - and once I got to the Basin I got really busy really quickly flying and planning options . . .

 

[N801BH]

Kool Write up... Glad to see you guys have a nice base of snow to build on. Hopefully it gets real deep as the winter progresses on so you have something to drink next year.:wink2:

 

[comanchepilot]

The local stuff is just window dressing - the real water is from up north and those reservoirs are still pretty full from 2010-2011 . . .

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action

they are all above average for the date and its been snowing to beat the band in the Sierras . . . should be a good water year.

 

[Morne]

Good AAR.

 

[denverpilot]

Interesting story. We see so little chance to mess around safely near cold wet clouds here that I'd have known my limits of knowledge and been done for the day, even with on board weather. Thanks for the write up. Like reading others thought processes.

 

[comanchepilot]

Nate, I knew that a) I could turn around, b) there appeared to be a hard layer around 11,000 since nothing was going above that, and c) the ocean was clear so I could fly out over the ocean and descend back under the cloud layer using ELB V363 POM to get home - and 3500 or 4000 would be enough to clear terrain - and d) I had fuel.

With enough fuel on board your options increase dramatically . . .

plus, it wasn't night time - if it was night I would prob have had much the same visibility of hole because the clouds would be lit up from below and the holes become just as obvious . . .

 

[SCCutler]

Fuel. I always have a lot, and it is never regretted.

--

Nice write-up.

 

[denverpilot]

Nate, I knew that a) I could turn around, b) there appeared to be a hard layer around 11,000 since nothing was going above that, and c) the ocean was clear so I could fly out over the ocean and descend back under the cloud layer using ELB V363 POM to get home - and 3500 or 4000 would be enough to clear terrain - and d) I had fuel.

With enough fuel on board your options increase dramatically . . .

plus, it wasn't night time - if it was night I would prob have had much the same visibility of hole because the clouds would be lit up from below and the holes become just as obvious . . .

Thanks for adding on. That explains your "outs" you knew you had, much better for me.