"Ron McKinnon" wrote in
news:YL9be.1133064$8l.199556@pd7tw1no:

snip
How on earth could you be an Instrument rated Pilot, or even a
non-instrument rated pilot for that matter, and be 'pretty ignorant
of weather' ???

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How can you 'depend on forecasts' alone? They are a sketch of
what someone thinks is *likely* to happen. They are not cast in
concrete statements of what *will* happen everywhere in the given
area. And even if they're right-on, for the most part, they can still
miss very localized or short-term events. You can't rely on the
forecasts alone.

And, in any case, you need to know enough about weather to
understand the forecasts so that you know how they might impact
you. This implies a certain understanding of the characteristics
of things like clouds.

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You don't need to know what a grizzly bear had for breakfast
to know not to poke him with a stick. Respect him just 'cause
he's a grizzly bear.

'Accuracy of predictions' is a red-herring, here. Accurate
predictions of conditions inside a TCU are not required.
Just know that if they're big and dark, they're probably nasty.
If you wouldn't penetrate or fly in the vicinity of a CB, you
should probably accord a 'big dark TCU' similar respect.

I think most people are fairly ignorant of weather, even if we
think we are experts. Otherwise the meteorologists would
never be wrong, and the rest of us COULD just depend on the
forecasts...

I suggest that meteorologists are not absolutely wrong as much
as you think. Or as much wrong as you think. But even so, this
does not speak to ignorance of weather, nor or weather processes,
but more to the difficulty in predicting very far into the future the
behaviour of a largely chaotic system such as the atmosphere.

Pilots do not need to be degreed meteorologists, but they do
need to know enough to understand what meteorologists are
telling them, and they do need to know the *basics* well enough
to expect that flying into a 'big, dark TCU' is very likely a
problem.

I don't disagree that pilots *should* not be ignorant of weather, and
*should* not depend on forecasts alone, and *should* be taught to
recognize CBs and TCUs and to stay away from them.

However, the IFR training syllabus fails to make this a prerequisite for
certification to fly a plane in IFR conditions, and as such many pilots
*are* ignorant of weather, and *do* depend on forecasts alone, and
*don't* recognize TCUs or CBs, because they have not flown near them
during their training.

A better example than your grizzly bear might be swimming and
snorkeling. When you learn to swim, you don't learn much about the fish
in the ocean - heck you may never even swim in the ocean during your
training.

So now you know how to swim, and you go snorkeling. Someone tells you
that it is OK to pet most fish because even the sharks don't bite if
they are not agitated. One day you find yourself petting a baracuda,
because no told you how to recognize it, or to stay away from it, and
just last week you pet a nurse shark without any problems and sharks are
much scarier, right?

I think too many IFR pilots are in that same boat - they don't even know
how to recognize a CB or TCU because they've never been shown one (the
instructor probably scrubbed the lesson because the forecast called for
them) and they passed through the clouds just fine last time...

What *is* and what *should* be are two very different things...