In article , Roy Smith wrote:

The tower will make some effort to see that you land into the wind.

The tower will make some effort, but sometimes it takes awhile for
them to spin things around, especially when the pattern is busy.

Downwind landings and short runways make a bad combination.

I was flying the pattern at Palo Alto (PAO) one day when the winds
were favoring 12, and then changed to a crosswind and then a ~5kt
tailwind. There was the usual 10+ planes in the pattern. I was
told I was going to be the last to land on 12 before they spun the
pattern around for 30. Unfortunately, the wind was picking up,
and I needed the runway to be about 10ft longer. Fortunately, the
plane wasn't damaged by the trip into the weeds. A few minutes later
the wind was reported as 10kts pretty much straight down the runway.
The runway at PAO is 13/31 now, so this happened quite a while ago.

It was quite eye opening to sit and calculate the landing roll with
a 10kt tailwind. It doesn't sound like much, but it will basically
double the distance needed.

John
--
John Clear - http://www.clear-prop.org/