News Weather Band Content Phenomena Solo

Mountain wave over Lake Ontario

  • By Alan Baughman
  • Apr 10, 2024
Mountain wave over Lake Ontario

A PIREP over Lake Ontario near Rochester (ROC), New York

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Weather Band Solos

To help AMS Members share their Weather Band contributions, we have created our community of "Soloists". In "Solos", our Members have the stage to showcase their unique weather insights. It's a chance for someone from the Band to have a moment in the spotlight to share their personal perspectives and insights, which adds more voices to our diverse community.

My flying career started over 50 years ago beginning with skydiving, then building a hang glider in my dad's barn, then moving on to sailplanes and power airplanes.

Flying and weather go together especially when you're soaring. I have had many long soaring flights well over 300 miles and durations over eight hours.

Basically, there are three ways to stay aloft in a glider or sailplane. There is thermal soaring, ridge. soaring and wave soaring. 

  1. Thermal Soaring: circling in a thermal gaining altitude, then speeding to the next thermal and the next. Thermals are often marked by the presence of cumulus clouds. 
  2. Ridge Soaring: running along the windward side of a mountains lift. I have flown many times at State College, Pennsylvania using ridgelift and have personally gone 150 miles using ridge lift.
  3.  Wave Soaring: under certain conditions, the wind will flow over the mountains and create waves of lift, sometimes to very high altitudes, often marked with a lenticular cloud.  

Like most pilots and weather enthusiasts, we're always watching the weather and reading weather charts, which brings me to the reason of submitting this article. 

On February 11, 2024, I was looking over the Prog charts, METAR’s and noticed this PIREP. (PIREP, or Pilot Reports, are reports of the actual in-flight weather conditions as encountered by an aircraft). A pilot reported a mountain wave at 37,000 over Lake Ontario. This is quite unusual and caught my eye because the prevailing winds are usually from the northwest and mountain waves occur above and leeward of the Appalachian Mountains. I have never heard of mountain waves over Lake Ontario. 

*Note: windbarb points in the direction the wind is coming from and speed.
 

 

A screen shot from Aviation Weather Center Observations on Jan 12, 2024. 

I hope you enjoyed this little oddity in weather as I did. 

I would like to add that Thomas Knauff utilized all three of the above weather conditions to complete an out and return soaring record of 1,023 miles in 1983 on the Appalachian mountains. 

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