We'll Try It Again!

Here it is Wednesday evening and the weather forecast for Friday is (more or less) promising for a flight from Connecticut down to the DC area. The projected map looks like this:

I can expect the high centered over eastern Tennessee to dominate the weather over the route. That will mean high clouds (if any) and no precipitation...so, no icing. But the isobars circling the low that will be far to the north over Ontario look pretty tightly wrapped. That will produce a lot of wind out of the west.

Here is the projected wind pattern for 00Z Saturday (i.e., 7 pm EST Friday evening) at 9,000 feet MSL. (I'll certainly be cleared for 8,000 feet MSL out of CT and over Eastern PA):

That looks to me like 55 to 60 knots of wind out of the west over my route to Allentown. The westbound portion of the flight looks to be a long, slow slog, and the southbound part - quartering into the strong westerly - won't be much better. I'll need to look at the winds forecast for 6,000 feet MSL, or lower. The best scenario may prove to be 8,000 until across the Newark (KEWR) arrivals, then descend to 4,000 past Allentown, Reading and Lancaster, then climb back to 6,000 to get across Baltimore (KBWI).

And I can hope that the low will have gotten far enough to the north that the winds will be steady and strong but not terribly turbulent. We shall see.