Just called in to both the hotel front desk (thanks for the rate info!) and Ross Aviation to reschedule my departure for tomorrow.
I’m a VFR pilot, and while the ceilings around KSDL may clear up to ~ 17,000 feet per the weather forecast, it doesn’t mean my path home will. I have a northwest route home to Las Vegas, and the weather system seems to be rotating in that direction.
One of my favorite features in Foreflight is the Profile View after entering a course: Even though KSDL and KVGT (my home airport) reported VFR conditions and high enough ceilings starting 1 or 2 pm local time, the profile view showed a decent-sized section of the trip had zero gap between the high elevation ground and the cloud cover. That means no horizontal corridor anywhere in that section to fly above ground and below the clouds, making this an easy(ier) decision to cancel my departure today.
I was leaning on that side of the decision even around 9 am this morning, but this made it all that easier. Plus with the amazing talks given by our honorees and guest speaker last night… well, it was an easy decision for my personal limits.
If anyone is up for dinner together tonight, let me/us know!
Same for me with LA Center & LA Approach on the way to Migration, when I needed some creative routing to get under the smoke and over to Banning. Awesome folks.
Adele flew down commercial on Sat afternoon so we weren’t going to do an early am exit on Sunday. The WX got worse in the afternoon. I was also exhausted from shopping. Last I was running up against night currency. Adele had work this morning so she took SWA home at 10pm. I departed around 11am today.
Now I need to check KVNY TAFs. We plan to go there tomorrow.
Good decision. Adele gave me grief for not having my IR because it was limiting our travel flexibility. That’s a great problem to have. That’s the outcome of Migration SDL ‘21, COPA, and the #cirruslife created by us…marketed by Cirrus.
We took off bright and early at 10:30am for Lajitas International Airport near Big Bend National Park. Spent about 30 mins in IMC at 11k with icing forecast at 13k and above. Had a VMC bailout below the clouds at 9500 that kept us well above the rocks. Smooth ride until a bit of convection came up. We then dodged widely scattered storms through NM and TX.
Yeah, the problem with this stupid smoke is that it just doesn’t show up properly in the weather reporting. When I was on top of the smoke near Bakersfield, it was a solid undercast. Absolutely no ground visibility. But the METARs in that area were all reporting SKC! Totally untrustworthy. (I diverted out to the coast where it was clearer and then got under it.)
You might give a look at one of the satellite weather sites before you go. I was looking at https://zoom.earth and it seems to have good imagery, updated every 10 minutes.
Sorry we didn’t connect at Migration, Kurt! I did hear you on frequency a couple of times on the way there, but I think my route changes put me into SDL behind you. Oh, or if you were dropping your wife off in SEZ, maybe I was ahead of you!
