A pilot who believes that visibility in smoke will remain consistent is bound to be disappointed one of these days.
If you are flying a considerable distance from the source of the smoke, the visibility tends to even out, and be generally fairly consistent.....did I use enough qualifiers there?
But, if there's a fire closer, visibility can change very quickly from a few miles visibility to near zero visibility in no time at all. And, depending on where you're at when that happens, it can be a deeply moving religious experience.
For twenty seasons, I worked from Fairbanks to the north, most days, including in the big fire seasons of 1988 and 2004. In 88, I started attending the morning fire briefing on Fort Wainwright to get a better sense of where the fires were, and how active. Also, where crews were working the fires.
For perspective, that was the year that Yellowstone burned. In that season, fires burned ~ 770,000 acres. The media went nuts. Before any of those fires started, we'd burned 1.2 million acres just on the area that I worked on in Alaska, the Yukon Flats. Just one of those fires burned 1.1 million acres, part on and off the Refuge.
And, we had fires most years, some worse than others. I saw pretty much every flavor of smoke phenomena I can imagine, and several I couldn't imagine.
I tried filing IFR, which worked for a while, till one day I was headed north and Departure Control called to give me a frequency change, and asked if I was aware of the thunderstorm cell ahead of me. I replied that I wasn't, and asked where it was.....radar replied it was at 12 o'clock and four miles......
I requested a 180 and return to FAI.
I spent so much time during those summers scud running through the White Mountains and over the Yukon Flats......oh, and getting from the White Mountains south to Fairbanks in the afternoons.....at 100 feet, ground contact and maybe a mile visibility.
Then again, I was getting paid to get the work done.
It was always with mixed emotion for me when the "monsoon" rains started in mid to late July in the interior. It put out the fires, but then the scud running continued under very low ceilings and visibility......
I have to agree with a comment that Hammer made, regarding sun angle and smoke. Changing sun angle can dramatically change visibility in smoke, an interesting and potentially frightening phenomenon.
One day I was headed north out of FAI to meet a helicopter which was helping move crews on the Flats. I was to meet him at a certain lake, and pick up his crew to move them to a different lake. Fort Yukon, where the helicopter was based, was giving 3 miles vis. Fairbanks was clear, but I knew there was smoke to the north.
As I'm slithering down Beaver Creek through the White Mountains, the helicopter pilot called on FM and informed me that he was returning to Fort Yukon because the visibility was down to 1/4 mile where he was.
So, I turned around in the canyon, to head back to FAI. And, the visibility went from a mile and a half or so to nil, as the sun angle I was seeing changed. I did another 180 in the canyon, and considered my options. So, being very familiar with the mountain to my right (I did Dall's Sheep surveys in these mountains each fall), I opted to initiate a climb, following the side of the mountain up to it's summit at about 6000 feet. I called for a pop up IFR clearance and continued the climb to 8000 feet, turned around and returned to FAI IFR. I broke out of the goo about ten north of FAI.
The other phenomenon that can be sneaky is when the sky is smoky, the smoke settles over night as the atmosphere cools. As the sun warms the earth and air, the smoke becomes less dense, but the top of the smoke goes higher. There were times when I went north over the top of the early morning smoke, which was settled in the valleys. But, coming back in the PM, the tops were much higher.
And, here's the sneaky part: In the afternoon, you look up, and you see blue sky above. You assume that you can easily climb up to that clear sky and get above the smoke. So, you initiate a climb......and climb.....and climb. And, up around 12,000 feet, you realize you're not getting on top of this stuff. Oh, and by the way, you've now lost ground contact. You are officially in IMC.
And, of course, there's more. Bottom line: I don't fly in smoke voluntarily, unless it's more like a light haze.
Oh, yeah, and watch out for those TFRs. They too can bite you.
MTV
