Understanding the Weather for a Safe Paragliding Experience

Filed under: Paragliding

Like any other adventurous sport, paragliding has risks and dangers associated with it. To operate safely, a pilot must strive to minimize these risks. One of the most important pre-requisites to piloting a paraglider safely is understanding the weather one is flying in.

Paragliding is highly dependent on the weather

Paragliding involves the use of a non-powered aircraft; the reason why the sport is only possible in certain weather conditions. A good flyable day is one where there is light wind and no rain. Clouds are not a problem, an overcast day with light wind is often better than one with blazing sunshine.

Before launching into a flight always check the weather forecast. A pilots understanding of the weather is vital for the safety of a flight. A pilot must know how to interpret pressure charts, dew points, and others. Take time to read books and study. The weather can be your greatest ally in paragliding but if you are too stubborn to understand the principles behind it, the weather can be your greatest enemy. Never neglect the power of nature for it is a force no pilot can defeat.

What else should be known?

Knowledge of the weather helps a pilot make sound judgements about flying conditions. For ridge soaring in a dynamic lift condition, a pilot must know the wind direction and speed at launch. For thermal flying, as well as flying XC, a pilot should be familiar with the wind direction and usual launch speeds, the winds aloft, and the atmospheric instability and height of the cloud base. And in all situations a pilot should know if there are any wind shear layers, predicted storms, and how the weather conditions will proceed throughout the day.

As mentioned above a pilot must also know how to read pressure charts, understand dew points and other critical factors about the weather.

Pressure and Altitude

Atmospheric pressure is related to altitude. Pressure depends on the local weather conditions. On a stable day pressure will be higher while on a stormy day pressure will be lower. In the layer closest to earth known as Troposphere, the relationship between atmospheric pressure and altitude is expressed in the equation: Z=(T_o/T_grad) * (1 (P/P_o)^(T_grad * R/g)) where: Z is the altitude in meters above mean sea level, P is the pressure reading in Pascals, T_o=288.15 Kelvin (15 Celsius), T_grad=0.0065 Kelvin / m, R= 287.052 Joules/Kelvin * kg, g= 9.80665 m/s/s, and P_o is the pressure at mean sea level, nominally 101325 Pascals.

Dew point

The dew point is the temperature to which an amount of air must be cooled so that the moisture in the air can condense out. Dew point is an absolute measure of the moisture in the air and is independent of the temperature. Coastal areas do not have much difference between day time and night time temperature because of the high dew points in these places. The latent heat that results from condensation offsets most of the cooling which is why temperatures during night time rarely fall below the evening dew point.

An in-depth discussion of the above mentioned and other factors behind weather conditions are found in books and in the Internet, take time to understand this principles, you might be surprised by the vast amount of help it can provide to help you improve your paragliding skills.