Weather

The real issue in flying a small airplane is the weather. It's the one thing that cannot be controlled or influenced in any way. We can choose to go or to not go but that's about it. Weather forecasts more than one day into the future are nothing more than a guess. Maybe a scientific wild ass guess, but a guess none the less. The only weather that is assured is the weather that you are in in any given moment. So what does a pilot do? Well for starters we look at the forecast- it might be a guess but its a starting point. We look for weather trends, what has happened, what is happening, what is forecast to happen. We look to where the weather has come from to see what else might be on the way. We check the weather all the way from one end of our proposed flight to the other. We allow for getting stuck on the ground. We pray it doesn't happen. We fly whatever portion of the trip we can safely fly whenever we can fly at all. We navigate around the known bad weather. We look out the window to see what lies ahead. We pay strict attention to Mother Nature. We get weather briefings from air traffic control, we talk to other pilots, we work every inch of the system that we can. We NEVER fly into a thunderstorm. If running out of fuel is stupid pilot trick #1, then flying into a thunderstorm has got to be stupid pilot trick #2. And when everything is perfectt we get CAVU- ceiling and visibility unlimited- conditions with the wind on our tail. So far the forecast for our trip looks do-able. We shall see......