Daily Weather Log Form. Daily Weather Log Form: Fill & Download for Free

Over a century of detailed records, but some are older:Armagh Observatory StationWhile Armagh Observatory was founded in 1790, its meteorological records were started in 1794 and have continued uninterrupted ever since. The Armagh record forms the longest run of meteorological data in Northern Ireland and one of the longest daily records in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. Data from 1853 onwards is held in the Met Office database.Temperature and pressure were recorded from the start, and rainfall has been continuously recorded here since 1836. A Stevenson Screen was installed in 1865, providing a recognised environment for temperature measurements from this date onwards. Most of the historic data for Armagh is held at the Public Record Office Northern Ireland (PRONI) with start dates in the 1860s and 1870s for most types of data. Scans of the measurements recorded in observer’s daily weather log book can be obtained from the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium website going all the way back to 1794.See Recording observations for over 100 years

Disclaimer: …Pilot friends—it has been a few years since I was in the cockpit. Memory fades. If I have said anything wrong here, you’d be doing me a favor to correct it.Q. What happens when a plane cannot land because of weather?“Zero - Zero”~~~~Now… its been a few years since that day. And a few years since I have flown in the front seat at all.I am not even sure I know how to talk on the radios anymore.I was at the top of my game then. Today, I fly in the back seat, just another passenger.~So I’m doing my best to remember…. and I’ve probably screwed up a lot of the details here.~But some of them……I can’t forget.^ Super King Air — Naval Technology~~~~“OK, that’s it, Frank. We’ve signed-off everything (on our mission checklist). Let’s head home.”We were flying a routine logistics and training mission over an uninhabited region of Texas. Done with the hard stuff, we were just enjoying the view and telling sea stories.The Commander… and me.We were in Naval Air Station Corpus Christi’s best plane—a new Beech Super King Air. Or a C-12, if you prefer the military designation.We were still a long way out, nowhere near any controlled airports.We were headed back to the Naval Air Station—”Navy Corpus”.When we’d left… it’d looked like this:^ Navy Corpus Tower — The New York Times~~~~Severe clear!That’s how it was when we left, and it was supposed to be about the same, the whole way back. At least that was the consensus when we’d asked Metro about it in preflight.But after completing the outbound leg, we had gotten an early weather brief for the RTB—Return to Base—and had also called ahead to our friends on the ground in Corpus.On the phone that morning, RATCC—Radar Air Traffic Control Center—and then the folks in the Tower……they had told us that it had gotten “a little misty.” So we “pushed up” our takeoff time a little… To see if we could beat the weather—if there were any rolling in.The takeoff and climb-out was fine. “So far, so good”, I said. And it stayed that way for a while. But way out to the East, we thought the ground looked a little less clear than what we wanted. So we put the pedal to the metal.We were in the middle of nowhere. South Texas MOAs—Military Operating Areas— were like that. Lots of room for pilots to train in. To bore holes in the sky. But that also meant a lot of distance to cover to get back to an airport with sophisticated instrument landing systems…and we might need them today.We’d been flying a couple hours, returning from the West. I kept checking the throttles and the engine temps near “max continuous”—we were in a race with the weather to see who could get to Corpus first.Gradually, a few threads of clouds began to form below us. Wispy at first, but they were growing, and that looked threatening. We did not want them there.We called Meteorology again. ”Yes, it’s starting to look bad now—clouds developing in all directions. Luckily, no turbulence or icing, but the ceiling and vis are falling much faster than predicted. The worst thing is… we’re seeing lower vis developing from the ground up.”We turned on the Doppler Weather Radar—no bad storm cells we could see, and that was good.^ Airborne Color Weather Radar — Sarasota Avionics~~~~“Any chance it might clear up if we just burn some fuel up here for a while?” the Commander asked Metro.“You’re in that NALO bird? …………….Nope—I’m afraid this is going to get worse….”“……..Yeah……it’s gonna get worse…and then it’s gonna hang around for longer than you’ve got fuel for. That’s what I think, and Charlie thinks so, too.”(On the busier “Center” or “Tower” freqs, casual conversations were not usually allowed to drawl on too long. Radio discipline, they call it. But the Metro guys knew us… and no one else was listening).Apparently, the “dew point spread” … or whatever the heck it is that causes troublesome clouds to form just when you don’t want them—had “deteriorated.” That’s what Don said.We did not have to turn around and look behind us. It was further back to where we had come from. The dew point spread was changing fast, and reports from all sectors were that the fog was developing from the ground up. That meant that we needed to get to an airfield with a good instrument approach, quick. And it was not just us—it was anyone flying.Now everyone in the air in half of Texas was in some trouble. Maybe.~~~~The Commander and I talked about alternates—other airports we could maybe “make” if NAS was occluded. There were not many good choices. We could already see that the same thing was happening everywhere we could get to.There were TWO Commanders who took me under their wing to teach me to fly the C-12. I was a young Lieutenant. I was a leading pilot in helicopters. But I was very junior in multiengine fixed-wing. And I was much less experienced, overall, than either of the Commanders. This was how the military worked. Many senior people had taken me under their wing to teach me over the years. Hopefully, I was able to do the same for some new people coming up who had even less experience than me.We heard the radio traffic from the other Navy planes beating feet for home. On another freq I was monitoring, I heard my helicopter buddies in the SAR Bird (Search and Rescue Helicopter) that I also flew. They would RTB and then keep the bird “turning” on the ground… just in case we needed them. As for the rest of the aircraft in South Texas, they would all be in long before us. They were close. We were not.After a while of talking about it …. the view out the windscreen looked like this:^ VFR on top — Future Air~~~~Clouds as far as we could see. A solid deck of them stretching out in all directions.I switched up Houston ARTCC (Air Route Traffic Control Center).“Houston Center: this is NALO 236”“NALO 236, Houston Center, go ahead”“Center, NALO 236, we are mission complete in the MOA (Military Operating Area) inbound to Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, requesting IFR (Instrument) routing.”“236, Center: Roger. Squawk 4247 and ident”“Roger. Squawking fourTWO-fourSEVEN”“236, Center: radar contact. Turn right heading 050, climb maintain one-one thousand feet. Maintain VFR (Visual Flight) for me right now, and we will sequence you in”“Center, 236: Roger. Right to 050, climbing to one-one thousand, V-F-R.”It was good to have multiple radios. We stayed up Center on 1 and called around to do our own research on number 2. Metro again. The weather was closing in from all sides, it seemed, but Corpus was still above minimums. Alice was ahead, and it was already socked in.~~~~“NALO 236, Center: The weather is turning bad where you’re headed. What is your status and your request?”“Center, 236 is VFR on top with a solid cloud deck below in all directions we can see. We understand NAS is near minimums…or might be by the time we get there. Corpus Metro confirms. Do you have any clear place for us to land today?”“NALO 236, Houston Center: What is your fuel state?”“Center…… 236 has flight planned fuel plus the reserve for our filed alternate, and extra after that. We could make it to Houston if we needed to. Is there anything open we can get to?”“236, Center: Houston area weather is below minimums. Your vector is 050 at 11,000. Proceed inbound and we will pick you up shortly. Just let me get the low fuel planes in ahead of you.”Our controller was talking several planes in, and we were the furthest out, a LONG way out still, with plenty of fuel. So we were the lowest priority…at the moment. On the radio, there were bursts of activity, and periods of silence. In those silent moments, we knew that our controller was busy tracking, calculating, planning, de-conflicting, and sequencing—in 4 dimensions. We just listened for a while, knowing she would be back to us later.~~~~“236, Houston Center: proceed direct Alice inbound to the Naval Air Station. Standby for further instructions”“Roger, proceed direct Alice. 236”This is what Center was probably looking at, in those days:^ Chris Hall~~~~“236, Center: expect a GCA (Ground Controlled Approach) at the Naval Air Station. Notify me when you reach Alice. Descend maintain TWO thousand TWO hundred feet”“TWO thousand TWO hundred for 236, we’ll call you at Alice.”The Commander and I both went on instruments. We began our descent toward the clouds. Center gave us plenty of time to prepare for the approach and get used to IMC—Instrument Meteorological Conditions.~~~~Here’s the thing.There was nothing they could recommend, other than to hurry to the nearest airfield that was still “open”—that had enough visibility to see the runway at all—and see if we could make it in before they went below minimums. We moved the throttles up as far as we could safely do. Metro wished us luck on radio 2. Then they called us back. Everything in South Texas was now below minimums. All the military airfields, and all the civil ones as well.Most were 0–0. I mean 0 foot ceiling, 0 miles visibility. The clouds were all the way down to the ground—ground fog, continuous to a few thousand feet.(This was the 80s. You were not supposed to land in 0–0. You were supposed to go somewhere where it wasn’t 0–0, and land there).Our plane had the latest equipment available in 1987—Coupled ILS, Advanced Autopilot, Color Doppler Weather Radar.We could execute any approach that was available—but all the airports within easy reach were socked in. Except maybe one: Corpus Christi International had patchy blowing fog. If we were lucky, we might get just about to the runway… just about the same time as the fog blew out for a while.We got out the approach plates and checked it out.^ AOPA^ Flight Aware~~~~“236, Houston Center: NAS Corpus is hovering below minimums. Are you ILS equipped, Sir? Can you accept landing at Corpus Christi International?“Houston, 236: Yes Ma’am…that’s affirm. We are ILS equipped and can accept final - Corpus Christi International.“236: Navy Corpus is now reporting 0–0. Your destination is Corpus Christi International. Proceed direct Alice, at Alice, proceed direct to SKIDS, you will be cleared for the approach — ILS Runway one three.”~~~~It was not long before Center called us and informed us that “International” had also gone 0–0. It was up to us now. We would have to execute our approach, and hope that the weather would get better on the way down. Or land on a runway we could not see.It occurred to me in that moment that my wife and kids were probably on the sofa playing with those magnetic fish we’d bought. Or watching that dam Disney video for the 50th time. Someone else down there was probably making bread, or writing a new song on the guitar. The Commander and I were just a few moments from a successful landing, or a swift end.0–0 takeoffs happen all the time. 0–0 landings, not as much.^ Zhangping~~~~“Frank, I gotta tell ya…My wife and I are cooking steaks tonight, and I am going to be late since we are landing at the wrong airport. So this will have to be a good landing. I don’t have time to take it around…” said the Commander, smiling.Life and death moments come to us all. The Commander had had a few in Viet Nam flying OV-10 Broncos. I’d had a few onboard ship… and in other distant lands.^ OV-10 Bronco — FAS^ OV-10 Bronco — Pixabay~~~~We had been in the soup now for a while. It looked like this out the window:Daily Mail~~~~We had been listening to the other planes as they called “final” for landing. There were fewer and fewer as the minutes passed. One by one, our friends had made it down. And now the radio was a lot quieter than it had been.“Houston Center, NALO 236: we are Alice Inbound for the ILS Runway one three approach, Corpus Christi International”~~I was in the left seat.I flew it.The Commander was also the *Aircraft* Commander and Pilot in Command on this flight. …And my mentor.He watched the gauges and ran the radios, knobs, switches… read the checklists. He made sure I didn’t forget anything. And he watched me, carefully, to back me up. This was serious business, possibly landing without ever seeing the runway. Letting me fly was a compliment and an honor—a way of showing that he believed I was up for the challenge.When you are descending through clouds on an approach, you generally know about when you will “break out.”At some point near what Don at “Weather” has predicted… the dull grey-white windscreen in front of you will suddenly light up with colors—trees, grass, runways—as the clouds rise above you. Or so we hoped. Problem was, the breakout altitude most recently predicted was no altitude at all.Now this presents a little quandary. You see, it is against regulations to land below minimums. But I think it is also against the regs to run out of gas and crash a multi-million dollar airplane in someone’s back yard.So, take your pick, I guess.Fortunately, there was no turbulence or significant rain. Just the solid grey-white of the windscreen.~~~~Slowly now, our Controller keyed the mic and spoke, with spaces for us to comprehend:“NALO 236, Houston Center: It seems that you’re the last one flying in these parts right about now. You have no traffic, Sir. ……………………You’re cleared for the ILS approach, runway 13 at the International Airport. We’ll keep you on this frequency all the way down. ““236………..Report ‘safe on deck.’ You are cleared to land Runway 13. ……Good luck, Sir.”The controller was now able to give us her full attention, and there was no longer any reason to be quick on the radios. Instead, she was speaking in a slow, calm and relaxed voice. Her manner was both formal and familiar at the same time… in a way that I have only heard from aviation professionals. Confident. Polite. Gentle, even. Very Intentional—as if to draw a line under what she was saying. This becomes even more common and more appropriate when a craft is in extremis… or could soon become so.I think this was her way of helping us also relax….slow down….and give our full attention to the task. She also kept us on her frequency to prevent us from having to switch to tower while IFR on the way to a 0–0 landing. This was very unusual… and only appropriate in unusual circumstances. Her manner helped a lot, and set a ‘mark’ in time. As if to say: “from now on, you can narrow your focus to what you have to do. The rest of us are important only if we can help. We’re here. But now, everything is in your control.”She knew how important the next few moments would be.There is a deep mutual respect in military aviation between people who have faced danger together on the job. A shared understanding that others do not know. You hear about it…”camaraderie” or “Esprit de Corps”…but words don’t do it justice.Everyone who stays a while, sees some friends die. The possible gravity of situations like this one is not lost on that crowd. The understanding about how quickly things can go to shit… and the appreciation for competence when they do… is deep. There is an appreciation for life itself, and the full, and generally recent knowledge of its brevity….I was thinking of some words from mentors-past:“Slow down to speed up”“A quick scan and a slow hand”This was the moment when my focus became total and unshakeable.The runway height was 44 feet, 46 at the approach end. We hoped that the clouds would part for us, or there would at least be some opening—some visibility—once we got low enough. But just in case….that’s what we were looking for on the altimeter: 46 feet. That is the ground. We did not want to go any lower. And we could not afford to burn too much runway “feeling for the deck.“ So we wanted to be right around 46 feet and slowly descending …at the runway threshold.We stayed locked on to the instruments as we descended through 1000, 500, 400, 300 feet…There was no sound except the drone of the engines. But I am sure we could not even hear that—so intense was our concentration. We were “locked on.” Scanning: heading, attitude, airspeed, altitude, rate of descent, attitude, glide slope….CaptmoonbeamJetav~~~~200…..150….100….75 feetOutside: No sound. No visibility. Nothing. It was like we were in our own little world. The instruments were the only indication of any bigger world outside our cockpit. If the instruments had not told us, we would have no idea where we were. We could not even see any of the bright airport and runway lights through the fog. But the instruments indicated we were dead on heading and glide slope…to Runway 13, Corpus Christi International Airport.Not having any visual reference, we had agreed on when I should begin a modest flare into the landing attitude.Just like the approach plates told us, we contacted the ground around 45 feet altitude—with no visibility.Touchdown. It was not a bad landing. At all.At least we were pretty happy with it.On the runway now, I maintained heading as well as I could as we quickly applied Beta (reverse thrust) and Brakes to stop—the biggest risk at that point was running off the runway.Even when we had stopped, we could see nothing. No lights. No runway below us, nothing.“Houston Center, NALO 236 is safe on deck Corpus Christi International Airport”“NALO 236, Houston Center. There’s a bunch of us here, and we’re all pretty glad to hear that. ……..at your convenience…..Contact Corpus Christi International Tower. ………………..Good Day, Sir.”~~~~We were on the ground.The Tower could not see us, Ground Control could not see us, The Fire Truck could not see us. And the Follow-Me Truck could not see us. They all had the same view we did—nothing but grey-white. But there was no one behind us. So there was no rush now.Finally, we could hear someone shouting outside and we shouted back—that is how they found us.We’d come back and fly the plane out. Tomorrow.Back at the base, every one had a story to tell about their little brush with the weather…for about the next week.It feels pretty good when you have a day like that where bad things could have happened…but everyone made it home for dinner.~I got to “log” a 0–0 landing. Lucky.The guys said “Just think of it as a little ‘extra training.’” A bonus of sorts.A day to remember.The answer to the question: “What happens when a plane cannot land because of weather?” is: the plane HAS to land, one way or another, sooner or later. What goes up, must come down.^ Aerial Visualso

It's an interesting question.I guess the real question is "How much are YOU willing to pay, on every ticket you purchase, in order to be compensated when you are delayed?"Airlines don't print money... far from it. Margins in the airline industry are very tight. If you want to be compensated for being delayed, the money has to come from somewhere and that can only be from ticket prices. Basically, it would be like built-in insurance premiums.Most delays are not the airlines' fault. Some airlines schedule their flights a bit too tightly and overlook obvious day-to-day delays. Others may be short of crews. But for the most part, when flights are delayed, it is because of forces beyond the control of the airline... weather and the limitations of the Air Traffic Control system or (in the winter) deicing facility... usually a combination of all three. Sometimes delays are caused because people inexplicably get lost between the checkin counter and the gate, so their bags have to be pulled off the flight. Airlines don't want airplanes sitting between flights any more than necessary, so they are scheduled with reasonable turnaround times, but a delay first thing in the morning often means that aircraft is late all day long.Delays cascade, too. Maybe flights can land, but because there is a lineup for the deice facility, ground control doesn't have any more room on the taxiways for outbound flights, so they are held on the gate. So landing flights can't get to the gate so now its passengers are late, and that aircraft is late for its next flight and all of its subsequent flights that day.The other major reason for delays is maintenance. Like your car, airplanes are mechanical and electronic. Considering the amount of time aircraft are in service and the hostile environments they are operated in, they are surprisingly serviceable most of the time. But when things do break, for your safety, things have to be fixed before the flight can leave. Some fixes take a long time and will result in the airline rescheduling flights onto different aircraft or canceling the flight.Some delays mean that now the crew wouldn't be alert at the end of a long flight so, when a delay is called, it gets delayed further because a whole new crew has to be called from home or the hotel.Some people think that airlines should even keep "spare" $100 million aircraft just sitting around, just in case one of the in-use aircraft has a technical problem. They do keep a few spare people around, but not airplanes. Any "spares" are airplanes that happen to be on the ground for a bit longer than normal and are scheduled out later that day. Basically, the airline is hoping to get the original aircraft fixed before the later flight is scheduled to leave. Even having a spare won't solve the weather and ATC issues, though, and they are the things that cause the most delays.All of these solutions cost money, so I go back to the original question.Even with all of the BS involved, flying is an amazingly safe, fairly comfortable and easy way to travel long distances. And it usually happens pretty close to on time.. in fact, most airlines are within 15 minutes of scheduled arrival time more than 75% of the time. That's why people plan stuff around the published schedule. Maybe we should be late more often... it will at least lessen people's expectations. I've seen people get upset when we arrive 12 minutes late after travelling 10 hours through -55c air, smoothly dodging thunderstorms and clear air turbulence and dealing with winds of 150 knots, even though they don't even know, within a range of 20 minutes, how long it's going to take them to get downtown from the airport.It's easy to understand a weather delay when you're looking out the window at a thunderstorm or snowstorm. The hardest thing for people to understand is at the destination airport where they are waiting for that aircraft to take them somewhere else. It's warm and sunny in Orlando, you're going to Houston but the aircraft is delayed because it's trying to get through the deicing bay in the middle of a snowstorm in New York. Or the day after a major weather event. Crews and aircraft are scattered all over the continent, not where they're supposed to be... it won't be "normal" for a few days, I promise. And as much as software companies have tried and promised, there is no software out there that can get a schedule back in order overnight after a snowstorm going through the Northeast or Chicago, Denver or Atlanta.Airlines do everything they can to get you to your destination on time. They REALLY want to do that. Delays cost the airlines LOTS of money, even if they don't have to pay passengers penalties. At my airline, the daily on-time performance is the first thing we see when we log in to the employee portal and it forms a key part of every week's message from the VP of Operations, also in a prominent place on that front page.Forgive us for not getting you there on time, every time. Paying you money when it happens won't make it happen less, and it probably won't make you feel that much better because if you really had a meeting or a date or something else time-critical, money is not going to solve the fact that you were late or missed it.