Windy and Bumpy: Not a Big Deal—Until It Is

During a flight from Wisconsin to south-central Texas in a two-seater, it was a long day just to get across the vast Lone Star landscape. Naturally, I had a whopping headwind. While creeping past Dallas, I was reminded from previous flights there that a few things are different from home. For one thing, most runways there are oriented north-south, unlike the upper Midwest where prevailing winds are westerly. Then there’s the toast, always worth the trip. Everything sure is on a large scale there—big food, big airspace, and, of course, big weather.

Ready for a Reroute

Here’s an example: Let’s fly from Madison, Wisconsin, to Levelland, Texas. Don’t be fooled by the name. It’s flat there, but the elevation is 3,500 feet and marks the start of rising terrain, a geologic feature with a cool name: Llano Estacado. The mission is to fly along the scenic vistas, fuel up at Levelland, and reposition to Lubbock, your IFR alternate just to the east, for the night. Your ship: a sturdy Piper 235, known for long endurance (five hours plus a fat reserve) and useful load. With two passengers, bags, and fuel in all four tanks, there’s still 300 pounds available to haul a few cases of bottled barbecue home. The route from KMSN to KLLN is pretty direct, except for like the whole second half. That’s when MOA-land starts, with gobs of military airspace. So you file a first flight plan direct to Emporia, Kansas. The fuel’s cheap and the airport is VFR with just scattered layers above 3,000 feet. This’ll allow for a light-workload arrival and departure before continuing on into more interesting weather. 

The second leg to Levelland requires rubberbanding several fixes to get around the sprawling Vance group of Military Operations Areas. The floors start as low as 7,000 feet and go up to Class A airspace. Maybe you can still go direct and fly at 6,000 feet beneath the MOAs, pretending to be stealth reconnaissance sneaking through unseen. However, embedded within the MOAs are a couple of Alert Areas, surface to 10,000 feet. It wouldn’t be hard to skirt them by staying on the west side, but … better to daydream than try to save a few miles. And if you filed as such, you’d get re-routed anyway, plus it’d look like you didn’t bother checking airspace. With more MOAs coming, just get used to it. You file MAKES – PER – WENDY – HISLA – WUDPI. 

Amending Options

Speaking of Kansas City, they’re behind the “amendment to your route” from Chicago Center not far past Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Unbeknownst to you, in “direct-to” mode, those cruising below 10,000 feet get in the way of airlines landing south at KMCI. You copy: AGENS – IRK – ANX – direct. That wasn’t too bad. After lining up on the new magenta line, the slowing groundspeed gets your attention. The winds at 6,000 feet seem to be shifting more southwest, and the time calculation inches up towards 3.5 hours. That’s still well within the planned window and fuel margins, but there’s also some light chop. That upgrades to light turbulence on descent, and southerly winds reach 22 knots at Emporia. You are glad to get a break as you bump your way down to Runway 19. Back home, this is considered “too windy.” But out here on the big plains, it’s “pleasant breeze.” 

Weather up ahead bears good and bad news. The good news is that scattered thunderstorms moving northwest through Texas is staying well to the east side of the state. The bad news: AIRMETs. One’s for moderate turbulence from the surface to 5,000 feet was issued an hour ago, covering the northern half of Texas. Overlapping that is LLWS or low-level wind shear. The arrival into Emporia was bad enough in what you’d deem light turbulence. That might get a PIREP, but someone’s got to speak up about it. Otherwise “light” doesn’t qualify for an AIRMET. 

The AIM, in its usual oblique style, defines moderate turbulence as “similar to Light Turbulence but of greater intensity.” Altitude, attitude, and airspeed will vary, but not enough to lose control. (Food service and walking are difficult.) Well, neither comes easy in a four-seater, so my personal test is how clumsy it is to make a route amendment into the touchscreen. Three mis-taps qualify as “moderate.” As for passenger comfort, for the long flight it’s a concern. You plan to request 8,000 or even 10,000 feet on the odds the turbulence will be milder. The LLWS advisory is often related to a turbulence AIRMET and warns of airspeed loss +/- 20 knots below 2,000 feet AGL. Avoiding these areas isn’t feasible unless you remain overnight in Kansas. And with convective weather moving in tomorrow, you’d like to make Lubbock today. You call for a clearance and pull up charts for Kansas City, if you don’t reach Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City if you don’t reach Texas. Now you also see that winds have picked up between Lubbock and Levelland with gusts up to 30 knots. Winds consistently past that could trigger an AIRMET too, but only if conditions are widespread; we don’t see AIRMETs for winds too often.

Max Winds and Bumps

Once on with Center you settle on 8,000 feet. As the magenta line makes the course change to Ponca City, you see buildups to the west. It’s not uncommon for herds of cumulonimbus to build one after another, but at least these are still a good distance away. The main concern now is turbulence, which meets the “moderate” criteria based on the wings staying level; the flight path is in control. But the seat-belt action borders on painful and the constant, repetitive jolts qualify as “chop.” Center doesn’t blink, or chuckle, when you ask about ride reports between 8 and 10. However, nobody’s reporting at your altitude. So you fix that with a quick PIREP for “moderate chop” and a request for 10,000 feet. Without onboard oxygen, your personal altitude limit stops there. Things improve a tad to light turbulence with occasional moderate. You dutifully report this and confirm it’ll do for now.

Now you can turn your attention back to the flight plan, and see that it’s an hour behind due to the turbulence and the en-route climb. There’s still a 90-minute reserve, but you keep an eye on the many airports on the way. Once you leave Oklahoma towards WUDPI, terrain rises and airports get sparse so you’ll be sure to make a fuel-stop decision by KCSM/Burns Flat, Oklahoma. Weather stations so far show winds southwesterly, gusting to 25 to 30 knots. You did feel OK, at first, with KLLN for the availability of fuel, weather reporting, and its proximity to Lubbock. Between you and the Piper, you’ve safely managed gusty crosswinds. But a 27-knot component today is just past your experience. The main runway, 17/35, offers 6,000-feet-plus and an RNAV approach. The crosswind runway, 8/26, is tiny by Texas standards—2,072 feet. You can calculate landing distance on the EFB, but with extra power, partial flaps and wildly fluctuating airspeed, it’s a big unknown. So fly the RNAV 17 for a straight-in landing by the second taxiway. Tighten up and hang on.

Upon crossing WUDPI, you get clearance from Lubbock Approach to the VITVY initial fix and advise of a plan B to just head over to them if you don’t land at Levelland. At the IAF, the winds are 230, 24 gusting to 32 knots with moderate turbulence below 5,500 feet. You decide to PIREP this and the 20-knot airspeed changes later. You were also too busy to see all the cool rocks to the west as you abandoned the approach at 4,500 feet (644 feet above the LPV DA) for the safe haven of Lubbock, winds 240 at 18, gusts to 28 knots. An 8,000-foot-wide runway aligned with 263 degrees was a welcome sight. So much for novelty, but at least you didn’t attempt to touch down at Levelland. Was it the extra fuel, the backup plans, or simply not enjoying this? Perhaps all three actually nudged you to continue on from Emporia to Levelland, yet also relieved you of any pressure to force the issue. Once unsafe contact with the surface became quite likely, you made the pivot.

The weather on the big plains and all the way through Texas is indeed bigger and badder. The unique terrain and wide temperature contrasts just add to the dynamics—there’s a reason the region’s known as Tornado Alley. Still, I’d fly to Texas any time to visit places like Oil Field, Refinery, Ropesville, and my favorite, Slide. Starting in Kansas, I’ll keep in mind that it’s OK to make the flight longer if need be, and it’ll be worth the wait.