Strong Storms Impacting Regional Aviation Flight Tracks! (credit: www.flightradar24.com)

DISCUSSION: As strong to severe thunderstorms continued to develop during the early to late morning hours on this first Sunday of April 2017, many commercial and private aircraft were already being affected.  As if often the case during large-scale severe weather events, both commercial and private aviation interests are typically forced to deviate from scheduled flight paths.  Due to the fact that severe thunderstorms often become quite deep in terms of their maximum cloud growth, this creates particularly dangerous situations for pilots who are thinking about or attempting to navigate through or around such thunderstorms.  This is due to the fact that as severe thunderstorms move through any region, there are always consequential updrafts and downdrafts which can cause aircraft to loose control of their balanced flight.

Therefore, since the late 1960's there has been a consistent strong initiative towards improving the forecasting of wind shear and turbulence in association with various types of thunderstorms which occur throughout the year.  As shown in the two images attached above, you can clearly see how the progression of the strong to severe thunderstorms forced hundreds of flights to divert from their original flight tracks due to the presence of the aforementioned severe thunderstorm outbreak which began to crank into high-gear much earlier today.  Although this can create significant delays across many different parts of the aviation industry, "it is always to have a safe arrival than no arrival."

To learn more about other interesting weather- and weather-related stories in applied meteorology, be sure to click here!

©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz