Well, I thought I was really clever by booking my tickets this way. Here are my travel plans as they were. Travel from New York to Jackson, MS through ATL and then return, tomorrow on the 29th at 10:15 AM and then later back to Atlanta, leaving at 4 PM. Forecasts for tomorrow are 26 MPH in Jackson and the weather is described as a squall, and the weather in Atlanta is forecasted to be around 16 MPH wind and rain.
Normally I would be willing to wait, but I have a very screwed up ticket. I am trying to get to Copenhagen, because I am going to start school there on the 2nd of August. I don’t even have a place to stay yet. On top of that, I have a very bad ticket. I purchased a round trip ticket from New York to Jackson, which I described above, then a Aer Lingus flight to Heathrow, and then a seperate ticket from Heathrow to Copenhagen. Luckily, I don’t have to change airports in New York, or London, but I would need to check back in. I allowed for about four hours in each location.
My quesions are these. Ideally, I’d like to be able to rent a car and drive East to Atlanta to catch the second leg of my flight. That would be perfect, but would the estimated 16 MPH winds be too much? I have no idea. I have no doubt that Jackson would be closed due to the fact that it is a smaller airport, but I figure that the route from Atlanta to New York would be important enough to do. Once I get to New York, I’m fine.
Anyone know what I could do?
I am worried that if I’m not in New York, then I’ll lose my tickets and that I bought through Aer Lingus and BA (Heathrow to Copenhagen). My current plan is to rent a car and drive to Atlanta early tomorrow morning.
But mainly I’m asking, is there likely to be delays from rain with 16 MPH wind? I have no idea.
atlanta is not in the storm path at this time. so flights should be okay, there may be delays due to the storm.
if there is any way to avoid jackson i would do it. people are driving all over the place to get out of the way.
hopefully someone closer to jackson will stop by to tell you what they are expecting there. try looking at a more local broad cast online. local nbc, cbs, or abc stations should help you better decide.
ah good. then flooding and traffic should be your only problem getting out. her projected path after land fall is rather northerly.
def. expect jackson to close at the time of your flight. the eye is due to hit around 9am in n.o., so driving to atlanta would be best. by 4pm in atlanta things should be just a bit delayed.
I don’t quite understand about the 16MPH winds. Too much for what? Driving or flying? 16mph winds are a long long way from being considered a strong wind, you can easily drive or fly in them. Same with 26mph winds.
As far as flying goes, the wind limit for the aircraft I’m currently training on, a Dash-8 (37 seat twin turbo-prop,) is 36kts cross-wind. That is, we can take-off and land with a wind directly across the runway up to 36kts. 36kts is equal to 41mph. So a 26mph or 16mph wind is no where near enough to close a runway for us.
Rain is not a problem per se. The critical factors affecting your flights are the cloud base, and visibility at the airfield. If these are forecast to be below certain values at your destination airport, then aircraft need a backup airport to divert to in case they can’t get in. If the actual cloud base and visibilty are below other certain values at your departure airfield (normally much lower than those for the destination), then you can’t take off. The weather really needs to be quite shitty to close an airfield.
A tropical cyclone or hurricane weakens quickly and significantly as soon as it makes landfall. A weak hurricane in the vicinity of an airfield won’t necessarily close it.
So, what does this all mean for Jackson and Atlanta?
Based on the forecast you’ve given us I’d expect Jackson to remain open, however I have absolutely no local knowledge of the area, so I can’t be sure. E.g., I don’t know how your cyclones normally behave after making landfall, how far inland they travel before dissipating and so on. In Australia a cyclone normally becomes a tropical low only after travelling 50nm or so inland.
Atlanta, with 16mph winds and rain should be just fine unless there is some other weather phenomena that would close it.
I hope this helps, I would take the expertise of any US based pilots over mine though.
Ok, I’ve looked at the tropical cyclone statemnt from Jackson and it says the storm is expected to remain a cyclone well into central MS. Based on that, you’re probably correct in thinking that Jackson would be closed. Atlanta should still be ok though.
thanks for the info. I had no idea what amount of wind was appropriate for takeoff. As I’m flying to New York, I don’t expect any problems there. Now I just gotta finish packing and find my phone!
It means that the weather is generally an easterly wind at 7kts with more than 6 miles visibility and more than half the sky covered with cloud at 13,000 feet.
That, in itself, is a good forecast. However, after that there is a string of TEMPO periods. These are periods where the weather is expected to deteriorate temporarily for up to 60mins at a time.
The line bolded says that from 3pm this afternoon till 7pm tonight, Atlanta time, they expect temporary deteriorations of up to 60mins duration, with visibility down to 1 statute mile, thunderstorms with rain, and more than half the sky covered with thunder clouds at 1200 feet.
In summary, you have good background weather at Atlanta but there a temporary deteriorations that may require delays for landing aircraft as they wait for the weather to clear. Aircraft may prefer to divert to a backup airfield rather than hold in the air.
So to answer your original question. Yes, there may be delays getting in and out of Atlanta by air.
I’m well aware, that all of this is probably too much information, too late (you’d be in bed asleep at the moment), but I pressed on with it as a personal exercise in decoding USA aviation weather. It is slightly different from our system.
I never get a good night’s sleep when I need it! Plus, I’m watching the hurricane come in before I go to bed in a minute.
That sounds fine, as my connecting flight from JFK leaves at 10 PM tomorrow. I am just ready to get the hell out of here, not only because I am in a rush to get to where I need to go, but also because of the weather. My flight leaves tomorrow at 3:40 PM.
Funnily enough, I didn’t think of this. My original flight was from JFK to ATL to JAN. Then I thought it was the reverse on the way back. Actually it was to go through cincinati on the way back. I didn’t know this though. After seeing that Delta was already offering reschedules for flights out of Jackson tomorrow, I figured I’d better find a different way. I thought I’d just drive my first leg and then go from Atlanta, but I knew that I needed to call Delta to alert them that I wouldn’t be on my first leg. That’s when I learned. But fortunately, Delta changed my ticket to let me go from ATL to JFK free of charge. I thought that was pretty accomodating of them, so I am glad.
And after all that I’ve just noticed that I neglected the “From” periods.
Above the bolded TEMPO period is a line which says that from 2pm local time, the background weather is a southeasterly at 13kts with 5 statute miles of visibility, showers of rain, and overcast at 2500’. The wind and visibility is still fine, the rain shouldn’t be a problem, without knowing the local terrain, I don’t know if a 2500’ cloud base is ok or not. 2500’ would normally be heaps, but in mountainous terrain it might not be. I have to admit to total ignorance on the Atlanta landscape :)!
If you’re really concerned about it, give the airline a call, they should know if they are expecting weather related delays or not.
No problems at all. I rented a car and drove to Atlanta, where it was pretty nice when I got there, but started raining before takeoff. It was a nice feeling to see the sun after breaking through the clouds though.
Right now I’m sitting in Heathrow about to catch the last leg of my flight, so things are fine at the moment. Thanks for the concern
enjoy denmark and watch out for people named jensen.
mr death ray, to answer your pondering…holding onto hurricane status can vary from storm to storm. depends on what they are traveling over, how fast they are moving, and what strength they start out as. mountains knock them out very quickly, lakes and swamps help them hold on for quite some time.
distance doesn’t matter wind speed and storm surge is what tells you what you are facing.
they lose hurricane status when they go below 74 mph. they are tropical storms from 73 mph-39mph.
it can take a storm quite some time to slow down to 39mph, exp. when they start out as big as katrina. she was hanging around the lower end of a cat 5 (155+), and hit at the very high end of cat 4 (131-154 mph). depending on what her final storm surge (cat 5 19 feet +) turns out to be she could be put into either cat. regardless of windspeed. she came in at 150mph.
Thanks Rocking Chair. As I said, the cyclones that hit northern Australia seem to lose energy very quickly. I suppose it helps that there are no significant lakes or anything up here, so once they move over land they peter out.
