Aviation weather thread

The fundamental problem with snow in this part of the world is that it cannot be relied on to be easy to clear, if it's dry powder snow, then getting rid of it is very easy, if it's wet snow that packs into a sheet of ice it is very hard to remove, and also needs a lot more machines and operators to do it, and unfortunately, the climate here means that we get wet snow more often than not.

Historically, Dublin was very poor at snow management, I can still remember a day when I got to the airport by road for an early flight to Dusseldorf, but due to some very inept management at the airport, nothing got in or out of the airport that morning, and eventually, at around 1400, the flight was cancelled, so we could all legitimately go home and get a full refund, which we did, and the road journey happened without much trouble, as the roads were still not a problem. The problem at the airport was that the relevant managers had not made sure they had snow clearing staff on standby, so by the time they had people to operate the relevant machines, they were unable to get on top of the problems caused by the delay. That was a good few years ago, I think (hope) things are better organised now, and they have more machinery that is suitable for dealing with whatever the elements throw at us, though I seem to recall that the "Isle of Man" snow shadow did cause more than a few problems a few years ago, as it caused significant streamers to dump regular snow on the airport area for several days.

This time round, I think they've been lucky, it didn't amount to much, so there wasn't the same degree of problems that have happened in previous years.

I've been watching the information about this weather system develop in the weather forum, and the only thing we can say with any certainty is that tomorrow morning is going to be a lot wilder than people are used to, especially in the Dublin and East coast area, and with the very uncertain way that this is developing, it is almost impossible to give accurate predictions of what will happen hour by hour.

Due to the speed with which it is developing, there have been suggestions that the orange warning issued earlier may in fact prove to be not enough, while it's not upgraded yet to a red warning, there is the potential for gusts that would be in the order of speeds appropriate to a red warning, and if that sort of strength comes through the Dublin area, there will be a real potential for delays, for safety reasons.

Ground support equipment like stairs are very vulnerable to high winds, especially those used on the larger wide body aircraft, and I know from experience that cargo containers and the like can be very hard to manage on a high loader 20 Ft in the air, especially if there's not much weight in them.

So, I will be surprised if there are no delays or problems at the airport, even simple tasks like opening and closing the doors can be a challenge if the aircraft is on a remote stand and not protected from the winds by a jetway or terminal building.

Having said that, it's hard to believe that there will be such a dramatic change in the weather in such a relatively short time scale, I am sitting here typing this now, and there's very little indication that the winds are going to change so much in the next few hours, when I came in a few hours ago, it was almost flat calm here in Ashbourne, which would be unusual given how close we are to the Wicklow hills, which tend to modify the local winds quite significantly.

If it is going to be as rough as the more pessimistic forecasts are calling, care will most definitely be needed on the roads in the morning, especially in smaller and lighter vehicles on roads that run North South, like the N2 North of Ashbourne.