the weather channel is great, but i love aviation weather, and dealing with safety of flight rather than just doing weather for the sake of doing weather. it feels great to know you keep a flight out of harms way. just last week i forecast for and brief severe icing, prior to the nws sigmet for severe icing, and continued to do so even after it had expired.....2o r 3 hours later, the nws decided to reissue the sigmet. it felt good knowing that i kept flights safe before, during and after that time, ( the cause of the severe icing didn't just go away, it was there before, during and even after the original sigmet expired, so i continued to forecast for the condition). sometimes i wonder what they are thinking. (but all in all i think they do a dam good job, considering).
it suprise's me that they only seem to issue warnings for severe icing once they have had several pireps indicating the condition exists.
multiple freezing levels with rain = severe icing, period. if ur aircraft is in a frozen layer and a warm layer aloft is melting the snow into liquid and its falling on your frozen aircraft surfaces........ICE, and lots of it. (that's just the basics of it, there are a few other things that have to be considered, but all in all that's it).
it seems funny though that many pilots don't want to believe severe weather forecasts until they have been confirmed by some poor slob that wasn't told about the condition, and is now trying to make an emergency landing somewhere.
don't get me wrong, i love pilots, i even fly as student pilot. if it were not for all
of you, i would be out of a job. even the dispatchers are great, (but they can only relay what the nws is putting out, not forecast it in advance).
hopefully one of these days, after retirement, ill get my ratings, and settle down to become a flight instructor somewhere, and maybe even a c208 driver for airnet, or the little purple package pushers.
by the way, any airnet guys out there think the company would benefit from having their own weather dept......
"for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction"