Tristar
Pattern Altitude
As a flight instructor, you make the ultimate go/no-go decision before every flight especially when students are new to the idea of weather decision making. However, it's not always thunderstorms or clear blue sky.
In the summer time scattered pop up thunderstorms seem to be the name of the game. It's tricky to decide whether they'll blow by in a few minutes or build to something that cancels a flight. We had a thunderstorm to the south of the field yesterday which was also moving directly east. I had hoped it would blow by by the time pre-flight briefing and pre-flight was done but a huge strike of lightning proved a change in plans. And as many flight instructors and even pilots have experienced, sometimes it looks like a bunch of light showers which you can navigate around but minutes later the airport is drenched so you're glad you didn't go. The difference between flight training and flying for fun is that most of the time you're staying in one spot to practice maneuvers which means there is no flying around the larger storms. Since this is a factor before many flights during the summer time, It would be impractical to cancel all of them but I do not want to teach my students that it's okay to fly around thunderstorms. So what does this lead up to? What I'd like to know is your tips of weather decision making. How do you decide whether or not to fly in scattered thunderstorms. A light rain shower isn't going to hurt you but shifting winds/rain and lightning is a problem.
In the summer time scattered pop up thunderstorms seem to be the name of the game. It's tricky to decide whether they'll blow by in a few minutes or build to something that cancels a flight. We had a thunderstorm to the south of the field yesterday which was also moving directly east. I had hoped it would blow by by the time pre-flight briefing and pre-flight was done but a huge strike of lightning proved a change in plans. And as many flight instructors and even pilots have experienced, sometimes it looks like a bunch of light showers which you can navigate around but minutes later the airport is drenched so you're glad you didn't go. The difference between flight training and flying for fun is that most of the time you're staying in one spot to practice maneuvers which means there is no flying around the larger storms. Since this is a factor before many flights during the summer time, It would be impractical to cancel all of them but I do not want to teach my students that it's okay to fly around thunderstorms. So what does this lead up to? What I'd like to know is your tips of weather decision making. How do you decide whether or not to fly in scattered thunderstorms. A light rain shower isn't going to hurt you but shifting winds/rain and lightning is a problem.