"What does it say," I ask the Captain after he returns to the airplane following our short trip from St. Louis.
Frustrated, he tosses the paperwork between us and exclaims, "How the hell am I supposed to tell? They give us 25 minutes to review this 60 page behemoth of a dispatch release. Am I supposed to plot the thunderstorms by hand? That could take hours."
Winter is gone but spring has arrived with a vengeance. This is the latest in the spring season that an EF-3 or greater tornado has failed to develop according to The Weather Channel. A massive subtropical system has formed just east of the Rockies and severe weather now stretches from the Dakotas to Southern Texas. Tornado watches and warnings have been popping up all day but anything serious has yet to materialize. The National Weather Service and The Weather Channel agree. Tornados will form and they have a high likelihood of being deadly.
"Hang on," I tell him as I grab my equally ridiculous smartphone and open my favorite radar app. Being a meteorologist could come in handy today. "Looks like there are a few cells left just west of St Louis. They appear to be dissipating but, depending on how high we get, still might not be able to get over them."
"We're filed at 3-6-0. That should be plenty high enough, you think?" he says "confidently."
"It could be but some of those storms had tops in excess of 45,000 feet not more than 3 hours ago when I left my apartment. Surely some of them will still be above us. This isn't a convective storm, it's frontal. I'd bet this thing still packs a punch through the night." The Captain looks out the window in contemplation as I pick up the flight plan and begin to program the computer. "Did they really file us over Memphis? There was a hole there when we left St Louis but that's the northern edge of the most severe line now. No way man."
"Let me see that radar," he says as he grabs my phone. For whatever reason, he still owns a flip. "Okay, well, once we check on with Center, let's ask for direct St Louis if they don't give us a reroute before."
The banter goes back and forth as we begin to make a contingency plan for our last leg to Oklahoma City. It's the first day of a 4 day trip and it isn't starting out great. Once we leave the ground, I won't have the luxury of my "state-of-the-art" phone to show me the weather; I'll have to rely on an onboard radar with technology older than most college graduates. It's helpful but it'd be like driving your car in reverse down a busy city street using only your review camera. In other words, the clarity is poor, and the blind spots are many. Unless the weather is directly in front of us, there's no way to see it.
****
Checking on with Chicago Center, we were issued a reroute before I even got a chance to ask. Just as we had planned, they were sending us direct to St Louis instead of the more southerly route where most of the severe weather was. Climbing through 18000 feet, the flight was still pretty bumpy but by cruise, it had mostly smoothed out. Normally this would be comforting except within minutes of leveling off, we become surrounded by clouds. We've entered the cirrus shield.
Downwind of most thunderstorms exists a layer of clouds that gets "blown off" the top of a system. In a small system, this shield can present itself as an anvil-shaped cloud. In more massive systems, high clouds get blown hundreds of miles down range. If you've ever heard your grandma say that the wispy clouds indicate storms are coming, they aren't entirely incorrect. Those wisps are the remnants of the cirrus shield that we were entering.
As a pilot, this shield presents certain challenges. The benefit of jet aircraft over prop aircraft is that we are often capable of getting over the weather. If you can't get over it, you can usually just go around it. The primary method for avoidance? Seeing it. Now that we've entered the clouds, we have to rely on our radar or air traffic control. As it turns out, air traffic control is far less useful than I thought they'd be. "Waterski (our callsign), a line of moderate to extreme precipitation from your 10 o'clock to your 3 o'clock in 5-0 miles. Advise me if you need to deviate left or right." In other words, acceptable yet uncomfortable and unacceptable conditions exist in every direction you are trying to go.
The Captain acknowledges the warning and ask, "Do you have a best route through it?"
"Unfortunately no. You are the first one to fly this route this evening. I have no reports within 20,000 feet of your altitude. If you could, please let me know what you find so I can advise the guys behind you." Great. We are the guinea pig.
I speak up, "well, it looks like the worst of it is to the south. What if we go about 10 degrees to the left get around to get around the southern edge of that guy and then bend it around to the north to get around the rest," I say pointing at my onboard radar. There was a gap there when we left Chicago and, while it is closing, there still appears to be a gap."
The Captain agreed and ATC approved our request as we slowly banked the airplane left and right to avoid the weather. The silence on the radio and in the airplane was deafening. Occasionally the airplane rattled as we entered small pockets of turbulence. And then the clouds began to light up. Above us and around us, every few seconds, lightning filled our cockpit. Between bumps, I'd look out the window and an even more unsettling sight appeared, St Elmo's Fire. Passing through areas of charged air has caused our windshield to come alive with electrical tentacles, moving like a sky kraken that has blocked our path.
Then the occasional bumps turned continuous and began to worsen. It was bordering on the edge of uncomfortable, and as soon as the lightning started to pick up, so did the turbulence. The radios were beginning to turn to static. "Waterski....shhhh....Center...shhhhh...3 point 5 shhhhh." The static continued.
"Did you hear what he said," the captain asked me. I just shrugged and shook my head. He had to ask several times to get the full message as the bumps continued to get worse. Checking on with the next controller proved to be equally difficult as checking off with the last. As the last bit of yellow and red disappeared under the digital representation of our airplane, the bumps become more than uncomfortable.
The computer screens in front of me, once a crisp, clear representation of every important detail of our airplane were fuzzy and unrecognizable. The turbulence was making everything hard to read. I looked down at the controls and watched the autopilot struggle to control the airplane. I pulled the power back to slow the airplane so that the turbulence couldn't damage jet. And then, with one swift violent bump, the autopilot gave up. "Autopilot....Autopilot...Autopilot," the computer calmly announced not quite conveying the urgency of the situation. I grabbed the controls.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the captain look at me before he spoke. "Did you do that?"
I chuckled. "No. I think the autopilot called it a day. I'm pretty sure I just heard him say, 'fuck this, your airplane.'" I quipped as I now battled the bucking bronco. Within a few seconds, it was over. "What do you think," I asked. "Wanna give him another shot?" I asked the Captain. He smiled and reached up to turn the autopilot back on.
Wiping sweat from my brow, I leaned back in my seat and looked out the window. The clouds were beginning to part and I could finally see the lights from the land below. There was still an hour left in our flight but the worst was now behind us. To the south, a lightning show performed like none I'd ever seen before. The Captain and I watched in silence as the electrical storm lit up the towering giants not more than 100 miles to our left. Several lightning bolts flashed every second. The streaks looked like the bulging white veins of an attacking monster as they arced from left to right and top to bottom. It was incredible.
****
I landed the airplane without incident in Oklahoma City. Once everyone had left, I pulled my bags out and put them in the jetbridge where 20 of the passengers were still awaiting their carry-ons. Seeing everyone staring at me, I expected to get glares or snarky comments. The weather had delayed us several hours and I had no doubt they were cranky. Instead of just ignoring them, I figured I'd try a little levity to cut the tension. I smiled and said, "Well, I think we hit a few bumps up there. You guys didn't feel it, did you?"
A man walked right up to me and put out his hand. "Thank you so much for getting us here safely. We really appreciate what you did tonight." As I reached up to shake his outstretched hand, the rest of the people lining the walls of the jetbridge clapped. Others chimed in with "good job" or "yeah, thanks a lot." All I could do was thank the man. Their sentiment had left me silenced and I hurried out the door to inspect the airplane. In the entirety of my life, I'd never experienced such an overwhelming outpouring of gratitude. It was beyond humbling.
When I returned to the jetbridge, the crowd had already dispersed. I gathered my bags and, with the flight attendant and the Captain, walked up into the terminal building. As a result of being the last flight in for the night, it was completely empty. A TV, tuned to The Weather Channel, played for no one. As the Captain walked into the restroom, I stopped to watch for a second to see how powerful that storm that seemed so beautiful from the air looked like on radar. Instead, all I saw was images of destruction. Dozens of people were missing and buildings turned to rubble as a late night tornado ripped through Arkansas.
Later, in my hotel room, I would come to find out that our passengers had been watching breaking news of the tornado sightings in northern Arkansas while the Captain and I were finishing up discussing our plan. I can only imagine the fear and helplessness they felt as they knew we'd come very close to those storms on our route to Oklahoma City. Once we were airborne, there was nothing they could do but hold on....
The April storm would end up producing 2014's first EF-4 tornado and took the lives of 15 people. The devastation stretched along a 40 mile path just to the north of Little Rock, Arkansas.
Our path through the storm. You can see the severe weather we passed through near St Louis and the tornadic cells to the east of Oklahoma.
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