Hello!
I can’t seem to find the old “What was the strongest wind you ever saw” thread we once had so I start a new one. Also because the present weather around here has gone totally crazy. Yesterday we had almost 15 deg Celsius (probably an all-time record for a 10th of January), today a snowstorm again. I start to get a little worried. This is not normal.
Anyway, I think on friday (Jan. 9th) I encountered my strongest wind yet. And that was outside a jet stream! I include the wind chart which shows the whole wind field over Germany at FL 240 between 100 and 150kt. These are values that one usually only sees in jetstreams in these latitudes.
This one shows our crazy drift angle:
And this is what the groundspeed looks like with over 100kt of headwind component:
I remember having had a tailwind once at FL240 of more than 115 knots enroute from Rotterdam to Vienna. My flight time to Vienna was great!
Here I was flying over the Hadangervidda enroute from Bergen to Oslo at an altitude of below FL120. Great tailwind.
Yesterday we had almost 15 deg Celsius (probably an all-time record for a 10th of January), today a snowstorm again
The funny thing about yesterday’s episode was that it felt like Foehn, looked like Foehn but came straight from the west.
This is not normal.
That’s something I hear about the weather since about my birth…
That’s something I hear about the weather since about my birth…
Yes. But I’ve been flying professionally since almost 25 years now which means having to take the weather as it is on a daily basis. Until very recently we used to have textbook continental climate in Germany during wintertime. With some little fluctuations. But what we see now is really completely different. I flew every day last week up to five sectors per day. Only short range stuff within Germany and Switzerland. During that time I have seen QNH values between 1038 and 1007. Ground temperatures between -6 degrees C and +15, surface winds from calm to 35kt and 157kt at FL 240. All within one week. This is not as it used to be.
The SIGWX was showing a 230kt jetstream over Scotland on Thursday. I’m afraid I didn’t take a photo though.
London to Bucharest was 2h25 there, 3h35 back yesterday…
