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Channel Crossing Sunday morning

Hello,

on our way from North Weald to Switzerland on Sunday 12Jul the Weatherforcast for the South UK French Coast is not as good anymore as it was. What do the locals think about Weather in the Area Sunday morning. Only VFR possible.
For me its quite hard to judge at this stage how low the clouds will be… high clouds i do not mind ;-) I do not want to cross the Channel on low level.

Thanks for you opinion
Lucas

If you mean this

that would be low cloud and drizzle kind of thing, and as you say probably sub-VFR, but the forecast is 4 days ahead and the situation will 100% definitely be very different, so it’s too early to worry about it.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

For what it’s worth, I agree with Peter. It’s too far in advance to be worrying about that. If you look at the Saturday forecast you’ll see that there are a lot of changes in those 24 hours. There may be time gaps in this thing that will allow you to get though safely.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Also, this high pressure is moving in, in the direction of the arrow, hopefully

But then I did the IR Met by sitting the online QB 38 times, never opened the study material, and only got 75.001% (probably not far off the truth) so this is worth what you are paying for it

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Thanks guys, so will wait at least until tormorrow evening.
I have a week off, but my colleague not…

Lucas

Lucas,

I find this website useful for looking at the synaptic charts
Clicky here

It allows you to see the charts on one page, so that you can easily see where things are going. Down at the bottom you can see the forecast for the highs and lows (but without the fronts marked).

Watching as things get closer you will see if things are moving in accordance with the forecasts, or if they are changing radically each day.

I suppose the option isn’t open to you, but if it was, getting out on Friday would look like a good plan.

One thing to watch with that page though is that they charts aren’t all updated at the same time. So sometimes you’ll see two charts for the same forecast period, but one has been done 12 hours before the other. So pay attention to the times.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

You won’t get relative certainly until the morning of the flight, and maybe not even then.

Generally one should never cancel a flight on the basis of a forecast, but sometimes, if say carrying a passenger who will get fired if he is not back at work on Monday, one has to. But perfection will never be achieved, and my solution would be to not fly with such passengers – sadly!

Or there needs to be an understanding that they are responsible for buying an airline ticket to get back, if necessary.

Nowadays, when I do a significant trip with my girlfriend (and she won’t do more than 2-3hrs) I always buy her a return ticket.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Hello,
i did check Gramet and i found it verry interessting, but i can’t find out what the grey layer from EGSX until LFQQ is who is going until the ground (not the clouds!)
Is it what i assume fog?

Sorry for bothering …

Lucas

That’s the boundary layer. GRAMET (or to be precise: GFS) shows a probability of visible moisture there. This part of GFS is not very reliable. If it’s shared it means you should look at the TAFs which provide a more reliable forecast.

Hi,

Sometimes is very hard to plan using just the charts as the weather can change, speed up, slow down, etc for VFR flying.

If you have a smartphone, try downloading a Meteoearth app, I find it very accurate, you can see the actual live radar images of cloud, pressure, rain, forecast, etc.

I use it all the time, its an absolute must for a VFR tourer in my opinion.

Regards,

Evo400
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