Weather

When winter arrives, it’s nice not to have to worry about big thunderstorms, high density altitudes, and being bounced all over the place flying...

Last month, we discussed upper-air charts and how they shed light on your flight plans. Now, let's talk about surface charts. In the May...

The abstracts below derive from ASRS reports on Inflight Weather Encounters involving IFR. They illustrate a variety of real-world IFR weather problems and solutions....

Chances are you’ve looked over weather charts, whether at a dispatch office or on the Internet, and wondered how that pile of spaghetti becomes...

Without a doubt, the western United States offers the best VFR flying in the nation. This is partly why the military has its air...

The United States. “What a country!” as comedian Yakov Smirnoff once said. It’s equipped with first-class observation systems, sophisticated forecast models, and a lively...

Pilots have to keep up with quite a bit of knowledge. There are regulations, procedures, chart symbology, various engineering disciplines, and many others. For...

If you’ve ever faced a go/no-go decision with tantalizing blue sky above a low layer of fog, you know that departing IFR is an...

Whether you’re in meteorology school or ground school, the tornado undoubtedly captures the attention. I’ve often noticed how a room goes silent when a...

There’s no phenomena that shapes the flying experience quite like wind. It’s almost always present in some form. A crosswind makes for tricky landings,...

Scenic trips over the mountains out west often require creative flight planning. The smaller the aircraft, the more “scenic” the trip. That’s the whole...

From the 1930s until the 1980s, many pilots got their weather briefings from a meteorologist at a flight service station or airline dispatch counter....