Thunderstorms Impact Flights Across Southeastern U.S. (credit: weathertap.com and FlightRadar24.com)

DISCUSSION: During the course of the day, evening, and now overnight period, there has been an incredibly impressive long-lived squall line which raced across a good portion of the southeastern United States.  As has been case within the commercial aviation industry for more than three and half decades, commercial airline pilots are extensively trained to respect the natural power of Mother Nature and avoid flying close to or especially through strong to severe thunderstorms.  As depicted in the respective screenshots of the recent regional southeastern United States radar mosaic coupled with the regional commercial aviation scene both at around 1:00 AM EST, there was a clear impact on both domestic and international flights attempting to move through the region in which deep convection was approaching or moving through.  Hence, as you can clearly see in the screenshot attached above, there were a fairly large patch of airspace over the state of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia in which air traffic was kept at a bare minimum.  Moreover, these patches of lessened air traffic coincided with the positioning and/or the future positioning of the stronger convective cells.  Thus, it is clear that the air traffic controller network across the respective southeastern states made these incoming storms a top priority and was conveyed as such to the commercial/private airline pilots approaching the hazardous pieces of airspace being threatened by these deep convective storms.

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©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz