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    Winter Storm March 2001

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    We flew six missions on the springtime Nor'easter in early March, a storm which forced the cancellation of hundreds of airline flights when it brought freezing rain and heavy snow to these busy hubs.

    We typically fly a couple missions a day or two ahead of winter storms that threaten the east coast. Since this one did not move quickly out of the area, as most do, we were asked to fly several additional missions. Our data go into the forecasting computers at the National Center for Environmental Prediction. Here are a few photos from one 11-hour all-nighter around this storm.

    sunrise behind the prop Pilot Rob
    loading the sonde launching the sonde
    We flew with two dropsonde operators on this long mission. Scott loads one of nine sondes that we released that night. These instruments profile the atmospheric pressure, temperature, moisture and winds as they fall, in places over the ocean where weather balloons (rawinsondes) aren't available. Randy pushes the keys to command the launch tube to eject the sonde out the bottom of the plane. He uses the same computer to watch the data as they are relayed to the plane, eliminates any "wild" points, and double-checks the code. He has to do this quickly, because another sonde launch will be coming up soon!
    sun pillar glints in the ice crystals of the cold, high clouds hours and hours of flying over a solid shield of cirrostratus
    These high, cold clouds are made up of tiny plates of ice. The angle of the sun is just right for the sun to reflect off these ice crystals in the shape of a "sun pillar" (above, left photo). This is a rarely-seen light pillar below the sun; most are seen above the sun, when it is near the horizon. Of course, most observers are looking upward towards the ice clouds; since we are flying at 30,000 feet, we are above the cirrus. [Reference: "The Nature of Light & Color in the Open Air", Minnaert, 1954]
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