Storm Front

“Golf Yankee Mike, Final, Two Zero” I report to no one in particular as my student, John and I turn final for the 6th or 7th time tonight. We’re the only aircraft in the circuit as there is a storm moving in from the south and we are about to complete our session.

John sets us up nicely for the approach. Aiming point not moving, speed steady at 60 mph.

As we continue the approach, I turn my attention to the skies to the south of the runway.

Dark, grey, angry looking clouds smother the skies. There is a clear line of doom where the rain is hitting the Earth and I can see nothing beyond it. If I were to try and describe the scene presented to me using the language of maths I would say it was so grey it was grey squared…

That doesn’t really work does it? Apologies, I’ll try harder…

Returning to the story, and yep, that storm is definitely getting closer.

A glance at the windsock confirms that we are still ok locally, as it’s just hanging there vertically.

This is the (quite literal) calm before the storm.

We continue to land and John pulls off one of his best landings of the evening. He’s starting to get back into the groove now and has remembered that the trick to landing is to try not to land. Our job, as pilots, is to position the aircraft a few inches above the runway with the throttle at idle and then to fly it down the runway until the aircraft is ready to land and has shed its flying speed.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve said to students, you can’t force the aircraft to land if it still has flying speed – it’ll just bounce back up into the air, unless it’s a Ryanair 737 – but those guys have auto-spoilers and reverse thrust. We don’t have such features on our aircraft so you have to lose the speed by increasing drag, and we do that by keeping the aircraft in the air, increasing the angle of attack gradually to bleed off the energy.

I digress…

Another glance at the sky this time focussing on the wind turbines to the south.

Motionless.

Decision time.

John’s doing well and clearly would like the chance to build on the evening’s progress.

“Ok, John, lets do one more then.”

We position the aircraft and take off towards the now clearly much closer storm – a storm which is forecast to pass across to the south of us and miss us. It’s just a question of how close it will come now.

Damn.

Preston is now gone, St Michael’s is about to get soaked and Blackpool is a distant memory. However it must still be at least 8 – 10 miles away.

That thing is moving fast.

A flicker of movement catches my eye – the wind turbines are now rotating faster than a giddy hamster with a new wheel.

And at this point the VSI briefly swings upwards as we start to experience the effects of the first updrafts, pushing through the base of the seats.

“Ok John, power to idle and lower the nose, lets get out of this sky elevator!”

It’s now high time to introduce the ‘bad weather circuit’ – an early turn onto an abbreviated crosswind leg positions us nicely half way down the downwind leg and moving away from the storm front. The VSI settles and I check the windsock.

Its now almost horizontal.

FFS, as the kids say.

Now is not the time to recall that the average Cumulonimbus cloud contains more energy than several times the power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War 2.

However, we’ve judged it well and John turns final and executes a well held off cross wind landing. Time to repair to the club house for tea and medals.

Stay clear of those storm fronts folks – they extend well beyond the leading edge of the storm you can see. We were flying in the circuit and were well clear of the storm at all times and always had a landing option, but as my instructor said to me once – well more than once…

“Better to be down here wishing you were up there, than up there wishing you were down here!”

Fly safely!