Summer Weather in Florida - VFR ?

[jhempel]

I am wanting to make a weekend trip to (BCT) Boca Raton, Florida. The weather for the return trip on Sunday looks threatening. I need some weather advice from local pilots down there.

My plan was to fly early for the trip down and back. I am hoping that the weather I am seeing in the forecast is the typical afternoon thundershowers that Florida gets in the summer. Is this the case on Sunday?

I know I will need to get a briefing from Flight Service, but I would appreciate input from the locals who fly it regularly.

This is a VFR flight from the ATL area to South Florida.

 

[jesse]

I'm no Florida expert--but I have been there a couple times and have flown around locally some while avoiding the daily pop-up thunderstorms. From what I could tell--you could count on small thunderstorms popping up all over, more-so along the coast, around 1pm. Either wait them out or avoid them.

Once again though, I really have no clue what I'm talking about when it comes to Florida flying....

 

[ScottM]

Flying in FL means getting comfortable with being around T-storms. They are always there in some form. Understand the WX patterns on the east and west side of state. I have made VMC flights up the west coast while there are major t-storms on the east.

Shoot I even did a flight to Lakland from SRQ in great calm conditions while the first rain band from a hurricane was hitting West Palm Beach.

While flying low it can be bumpy to very bumpy depending on the time of day. I liked flying IFR up higher. That had two advantages. One the lack of bumps but two the lack of students flying around. There is tons of flight training going on and it can be very busy between 2 and 5 thousand feet. Heading up above 6 thousand tends to get you away from some of the bees nests. Plus there is military traffic, high speed military traffic so FF or IFR is a nice plus for traffic avoidance.

 

[jhempel]

Thanks for the tips. I think the trip down can be done without too much trouble. The goal will be to fly early in the day, before the thermal activity picks up.

The return trip on Sunday is a gamble. There is a 50% chance of thundershowers. Of course, as you pointed out, that is always a possibility.

The high pressure system over the southeast is keeping it nice here, but is dragging a lot of moisture from the south.

Hmmm..... fly or drive......???

 

[ScottM]

That is the standard summer WX forecast for Florida. When they use the words 'chance for severe t-storm' then really get worried about WX.

 

[Larryo]

I am wanting to make a weekend trip to (BCT) Boca Raton, Florida. The weather for the return trip on Sunday looks threatening. I need some weather advice from local pilots down there.

My plan was to fly early for the trip down and back. I am hoping that the weather I am seeing in the forecast is the typical afternoon thundershowers that Florida gets in the summer. Is this the case on Sunday?

I know I will need to get a briefing from Flight Service, but I would appreciate input from the locals who fly it regularly.

This is a VFR flight from the ATL area to South Florida.

J,
Yea, the typical thunderstorms are only on Sunday afternoons... (only kidding).

Your chances of a good trip down and back are very good if you can go early and there's no systems of sorts, and Sunday appears to be that way, but the forecasts aren't our for Sun, yet.....

Often you can go up one side or the other or head up the middle.

Fortunately, it's rare when the cells will completely block you, but you could have to file IFR to get between a few, and you'd need a SS or radar, but usually you can do it VFR.

Now, with XM, you can plan to avoid the clusters and figure out quickly which coast is better.

I'd go for it, keeping a good ace in the hole... a clear direction to divert, if necessary.

 

[Ken Ibold]

J,
Yea, the typical thunderstorms are only on Sunday afternoons... (only kidding).

Your chances of a good trip down and back are very good if you can go early and there's no systems of sorts, and Sunday appears to be that way, but the forecasts aren't our for Sun, yet.....

Often you can go up one side or the other or head up the middle.

Fortunately, it's rare when the cells will completely block you, but you could have to file IFR to get between a few, and you'd need a SS or radar, but usually you can do it VFR.

Now, with XM, you can plan to avoid the clusters and figure out quickly which coast is better.

I'd go for it, keeping a good ace in the hole... a clear direction to divert, if necessary.

This is good advice, but I would add that sometimes a frontal boundary will create a hard squall line that runs basically southwest to northeast from Gulf to Atlantic. Often it runs, say, from north of Tampa to south of Jacksonville, but it can be north or south of that. If that's the case, you're on the ground for the day. As cells move off into the ocean new ones come off the Gulf to replace them. You do NOT want to penetrate a line like this IFR or VFR. Fortunately, it's quite obvious on radar.

 

[jhempel]

We made the trip safe and sound. However, it would have been a much less stressful weekend for me if we had driven. I spent a lot of the weekend looking up at the sky and worrying about the weather we would have on the return trip. There were numerous storms along our path both ways.

I bought a Garmin 496 the day before the trip. I had a little indecision about the purchase because of the expense. It paid for itself the first time I used it! I can't say enough good things about the Garmin 496. It was simple to setup and use. The weather depictions were almost real time and very accurate. We were able to pick our way around the storms. I was constantly rerouting the trip to avoid storm cells that kept popping up.

I also made sure to stay within a few minutes of an airport in case things got worse. Fortunately, this is easy to do in Florida. Airports are everywhere down there!

We arrived safe and sound after making a zig zag path down through the state. Even with all the detours we beat the driving time by 5 hours.

As Ken stated above, the storms were intense enough that I would not have flown through them IFR or VFR. We watched a lightening show off the right wing for a good 20 minutes on the last leg to Boca Raton. We were racing that one in. We got on the ground just before the storm hit. It rained on us while driving to the hotel.

The FBO in Sebring, Florida is by far the nicest one that I have ever seen. It is worth the stop just to walk around and look at the painting on the wall and the decorations around the place. They have the cheapest fuel in the area too!

 

[Exocetid]

I am wanting to make a weekend trip to (BCT) Boca Raton, Florida. The weather for the return trip on Sunday looks threatening. I need some weather advice from local pilots down there.

I know I will need to get a briefing from Flight Service, but I would appreciate input from the locals who fly it regularly.

I learned to fly at SFB. Back then, it was an aging old Army or Air Force field (same as MCO and looked what it became) that was given to Sanford as a gift. All I can say is try to fly early. We used to say you could set your watch (4 PM) by the afternoon thunderstorm in Orlando, which is regularly cited as a lightning capital of the world.

 

[EdFred]

Scott, you have a doppleganger necromancer!

 

[rottydaddy]

During my (rather limited) time in Florida's skies,as well as the Gulf Coast (which is also known for frequent summer "boomers"), I have always been more concerned about large numbers of birds and heavy aerial traffic than I was about the weather.

They do make pretty impressive turbulence down there, though...

But it's not a whole lot different than the Northeast in summertime, if you ask me, and I'm sure you have flown in convective summer skies in the Atlanta area.

Just know what's going on before you depart, keep your plans flexible, and take advantage of the fact that Florida has plenty of airports handy for diversions.