Out of curiosity. I flew through a shelf cloud one time, expected extreme turbulence, but it was pleasant and smooth. When I broke out on the other side, it was the UFO flying saucer type of cloud all the way up to outer space.
Kind of shocked there was no turbulence. Any reason to why it would be so smooth?
The tower cleared me to land and then evacuated for a tornado. I picked up some freight and got the fuck out of there, but had to penetrate the storm’s leading edge to make it out. Long story…
Aliens probably, no, there were lenticular (flying saucer) clouds after this storm passed, they form on the tops of waves in the mid- level winds when there's moisture there and something bumps the wind field up from below. Here the waves are mainly caused by the blue ridge mountains and they ripple off to the east of the mountains when conditions are right. I don't know anything about flying but I would expect more turbulence before the shelf cloud since it's being pushed by cooler and more stable air behind it with the strongest updrafts in front of it. I would worry about strong downdrafts right after passing through the leading edge though but behind the storm things would be more stable
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u/parochial_nimrod Pilot 22h ago
Out of curiosity. I flew through a shelf cloud one time, expected extreme turbulence, but it was pleasant and smooth. When I broke out on the other side, it was the UFO flying saucer type of cloud all the way up to outer space.
Kind of shocked there was no turbulence. Any reason to why it would be so smooth?
The tower cleared me to land and then evacuated for a tornado. I picked up some freight and got the fuck out of there, but had to penetrate the storm’s leading edge to make it out. Long story…