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Weather Woes and Whines

Ed_Wischmeyer

Well Known Member
So I'm waiting for some good weather so I can make the first flight in my RV-8 after four months of recovering from hopefully my last spinal surgery. I'm flying the RV-9A reasonably well and was hoping to go in the -8 this morning, but...
* Last night's forecast for this morning was for scattered clouds at 600 feet, and at the Savannah airport, that usually means broken. Typical 14G21 forecast for the afternoon;
* This morning, the forecast was for 1200 scattered, but winds at 9 knots, some crosswind. Doesn't sound too bad if the atmosphere is stable, but...
* Tornado watch till 3 PM today!

My old Cessna 175 was tied down at Savannah and the tower reported a gust of 74 knots up the tail, and that gust damaged the flight control surfaces; and a thunderstorm a year or so ago had an 84 knot gust that took the door off the hangar next to mine and used that door to poke a big hole in the roof. Hopefully my birds will have a peaceful day in their hangars, and the roof will stay on the house.

But it's time to find my tornado checklist and be ready to put all the hard to replace stuff someplace relatively safe. Probably in the car...

Whine, whine, whine.
 
Ed.

We just had our tornado warning lifted here in Warner Robins, GA. I also worry about my plane in its hangar at Perry when severe weather hits, especially since I just washed it yesterday!

Hopefully, next week will be nicer for SNF.
 
Weather like this is why I cannot imagine owning an airplane and not storing it in a hangar. Hopefully the weather will be good next week in Lakeland and there will be no more tornadoes at SNF ever again, the last one in 2011 hurt a bit.
 
Turns out there was one brief window of accceptable winds and clouds but, needless to say, I missed it. The whole area is IFR low, winds okay, visibility good, but 800 ft broken. Oh, well...
 
Tornados

Took the Twin Comanche down to Pine Mt so it could be hangared before all this bad weather showed up. -9 still tucked away in basement. When it comes to tornadoes, all bets are off. Lived through one in Georgia in 1973 and I will never forget it.
 
Power-to-weight ratios, wing-loading, IFR tickets and glass panels - none of that matters when Mother Nature holds the ultimate trump card.
 
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