Pentrating Towering Cumulus Clouds

"Ron McKinnon" wrote in
newsG%8e.1066820$Xk.925695@pd7tw3no:


"Doug" wrote in message
oups.com...
I was in one once. A towering Cumulus. A big dark one. Weather said
just rain, no thunderstorms. It started raining. Then I lost some
altitude. Looked up and my airplane was coated with ice! Clear, but
ragged ice, about 1/2" thick on all forward facing surfaces.
Fortunately I had warm VMC under me, so I descended and shed the ice.
I don't fly into dark Cumulus clouds anymore. Only reason I did that
time is I was pretty ignorant of weather.

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' ???

I was just happy to have a
clearance and be able to fly in actual. I was in and out of IMC. Here
comes a big dark one. In I went. Coulda been worse, coulda been
hail....


I suspect that his level of "ignorance of weather" was that he was unable
to accurately predict the conditions inside that dark towering Cumulus
cloud he flew through.

I also suspect that most pilots, VFR or IFR, have been in the same boat at
some point after their IFR training, especially since it is not a pre-
requisite to receiving the instrument rating. We are mostly taught to
depend on forecasts and spend very little time during training on learning
to properly identify cloud formations from actual pictures or live
representations, and to understand what to expect within each type of
cloud.

During VFR training, you learn to just stay away from them. And during IFR
training, you get pounded about the extremes (CBs and Stratus clouds) but
there is really inadequate training of the stuff in the middle - probably
because the stuff in the middle varies so widely.

Can you accurately predict conditions inside of a towering CU unless you
get inside of it? There are different conditions even within the same cloud
that depend on many factors that include pressure, elapsed time, wind
speed, humidity levels, etc. So while one dark TCU may produce hail, rain,
and ice, the next dark TCU might be fairly uneventful and produce some
turbulence as you enter and exit and that's all.

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...