Still we went to bed with a mild degree of optimism on Saturday
night, deciding to make the call in the morning. I woke up briefly at about
6:30am; saw the snow passing by the window and rolled back over to go to sleep.
The plane was booked from 12:00 and the weather can change in a blink at the
moment.
Yesterday Bob spent a reasonable amount of time giving me a
valuable lesson in weather interpretation. We looked at METARs and TAFs, not
just the ones for the local area, but east and west too. He showed me how to
look for trends, how to judge what is heading your way and how to tell if the
TAF matches the METAR and so if you should trust it or not. We looked at GFAs
and talked about how to interpret them as well. We also discussed the time
honoured method of walking out onto the apron and taking a look around, the CN
tower provides a pretty good indication of the cloud base, I still think it
should be marked in 100ft intervals though to make the job easier! I admitted
to Bob that my preflight weather analysis usually involves stepping out onto my
balcony and seeing if there are any other planes in the circuit! I’m spoiled
though because I can actually see the windsock at the airport from my bed!
At about 10:00 RTH and I made the no go call. When flight services
agree that it’s a “sucky day to be up there” then you know to call it a day,
despite dispatch trying to persuade us otherwise*. We got on with our day and
the weather continued to drop the white stuff. At around 12:00, when we should
have been taking off RTH asked me from his den “ what’s it looking like out
there?”I popped my head around to the window and said “I dunno, I can’t see an
out there.” It was a solid wall of falling snow. Visibility less than a couple
of hundred metres.
Yeah we made the right call
* this would be the same person who jokingly tried to persuade me
to fly the day before, “ah you’ve only got gusty winds, turbulence, snow and
potential icing to worry about , I don’t know why you are cancelling!”
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