There's Hope for Monday!

Actually, from this distance Monday is looking pretty good. The Really Big Low that dropped a lot of snow in some parts of the northeast yesterday (and in other parts, hardly any at all) is rapidly heading off to the Canadian Maritimes, with high pressure filling in behind.

Still, that's a whole bunch of isobars crowded in between the center of low pressure and my anticipated route of flight from Maryland to Connecticut. It will be breezy; it may be bumpy.

A look at the Model Output Stats (MOS) gives reason for optimism. For Andrews AFB on Monday at 12Z, the NAM model is predicting high scattered clouds, no precipitation and winds 310 at 12 knots (that's from today's 12Z model run). The same run predicts the weather three hours later at Bridgeport to be high broken, no precip and wind from 330 at 19 knots. That all works for me.

Cross-checking the GFS model (same run time), the only difference for Andrews at 12Z is one fewer knot of wind speed. KBDR at 15Z is forecast to be clear, but otherwise the same. I like it when the models agree.

The forecast winds aloft (from Aviation Digital Data Service (Adds)) could be a whole lot worse. It looks like a good tailwind for the first part of the trip, then about 30 knots of left-to-right crosswind up over New Jersey and KJFK. As of now, FltPlan.com is projecting a time en route of 1 hour + 54 minutes.

Now all I have to do is dig out an airplane. That's on the to-do list for this afternoon.