Storms

I am interrupting my "How to Become a Pilot" series to share some awesome photos of weather conditions we've seen around the Valley lately. Awesome to see from a far... extremely hazardous to fly through for any type of aircraft.

This first one is a rain storm/microburst.  Microbursts are dangerous and cannot always be seen with your eyes.  They are basically a strong downdraft in a thunderstorm. When a plane flies through a microburst, a central space will literally push the plane downwards...almost like someone punches it down from up above. The danger doesn't stop there.  When the air is pushed downwards like that it sort of spills out...the way water does when you turn your kitchen sink on. This spillover causes damaging winds on or near the ground.

Rain Storm/Microburst on July 18, 2016 near South Mountain in Phoenix

Unfortunately, before we had the technology to better detect microbursts in 1985, Delta Flight 191 flew into a microburst just before landing.  You can watch the story here (NOT for those who have a fear of flying!).  The plane was already too low to recover from the downdraft forces, and the microburst outflow and inflow forces caused the plane to crash before the pilots could recover.  As a result, 137 people were killed and 27 survived.  As is with every crash in aviation, new regulations and technology are created to avoid similar scenarios in the future.  That's why flying today is so safe. After the tragedy of Delta Flight 191, technology advancements were made and now aircraft are equipped with doppler technology to better detect these conditions and avoid them.

Learning from these tragedies is something I so admire about the aviation industry.  Whether a crash involves a human factor or not, flight crews study these historical occurrences to learn from them. Even the medical world has learned from the way aviation approaches its operations to help decrease the number of deaths...by implementing the use of checklists and team approaches.  The area they could probably grow in is when a preventable death does occur, allowing it to be made known for other MDs to learn from...instead of keeping it silent through all those non-disclosure agreements.

As for me, this storm was obviously easy to spot and we kept our distance!

Dust Storm on July 19, 2016 near San Tan Valley