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Brainteasers
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April 21, 2005

Brainteasers
Interactive Quiz #93:
Thundering Questions

What can be taller than Mount Everest, wetter than a sloppy kiss, and meaner than a tax audit? Yes, thunderstorms. ATC offers some help around these gorgeous beasts, but successful circumnavigation depends on you.

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer the questions as best you can, then click on the "Score my quiz answers" button to see your score and read the explanations. If you don't like your score the first time around, you can change some of your answers and resubmit. To get the most out of this quiz, we suggest you keep trying until you get a perfect score.

NOTE: When more than one answer is true, only the most complete, correct answer will be scored as correct. The answers are assumed to apply within the United States unless otherwise noted.

1. After taking delivery of a Cirrus SR22 in Duluth, Minn., you depart at dawn in clear skies headed home to the Scorched Valley Aero Ranch in Arizona. It's springtime in much of the continental U.S., and as you head southwest you encounter warmer, humid skies and weather reports that include Convective SIGMETs for thunderstorms with tops exceeding 45,000 feet forming near your first fuel stop. Not inclined to pop your ballistic chute at such heights, you rule out climbing above the storm. ATC advises that rain has begun to fall to the surface and visibility has dropped to one mile. This indicates what phase of a thunderstorm's life cycle?
a. Developing
b. Mature
c. Dissipating
d. Downdraft
2. Other than puking passengers, what potential hazards can you expect in or near thunderstorms?
a. Heavy rain, wind shear, hail, clear ice, roll clouds, blowing dust, and lightning.
b. Heavy rain, wind shear, hail, rime ice, roll clouds, blowing dust, and lightning.
c. Heavy rain, wind shear, hail, mixed ice, and roll clouds.
d. All of the above and more.
3. The factory stuffed enough electronic weather equipment into your new airplane to make the National Weather Service (NWS) envious. Still, you should know how to interpret a simple METAR (routine weather report) or TAF (aerodrome forecast) in order to spot potential convective trouble. What is the official METAR descriptor (abbreviation) for a severe thunderstorm?
a. None of the below
b. T+
c. TS+
d. TS GR
e. TRW++
4. Short of finding baby scorpions in your oxygen mask, there's little that can get a pilot's attention faster in flight than stumbling into a thunderstorm, even a small one. The turbulence alone blurs the instruments until they're almost unreadable, rain sprays like the world's greatest carwash, and lightning can temporarily blind the pilots as they desperately try to read the shaking instruments. Should you inadvertently penetrate a thunderstorm, according to the FAA, you should ... (We're talking about making the best of a thoroughly awful situation here.)
a. Immediately bank and turn back.
b. Hold altitude and course.
c. Maintain constant attitude and hold course.
d. Squawk 7600 and fly visually through the cell.
5. Thunderstorms are sneaky and can form as individual cells, which are easy to spot and circumnavigate, or they can form in wide horizontal lines well ahead of a fast-moving cold front. Such lines of thunderstorms are generally nasty, not worth penetrating, and are called:
a. Squaw lines
b. Squash lines
c. Clothes lines
d. Squall lines
e. Scrum lines
6. Convective SIGMETs (WST) are issued for the Western (W), Central (C), or Eastern (E) United States (lower 48 states) to warn of (among other things) embedded thunderstorms or a line of thunderstorms. In Hawaii, where it's unthinkable to even suggest bad weather, embedded thunderstorms or lines of thunderstorms are heralded in:
a. SIGMETs (WS)
b. AIRMETS (WA)
c. Convective SIGMET (H)
d. Center Weather Advisory (CWA)
e. Great dismay
7. One of the many dangers found when operating near a thunderstorm is wind shear -- a change in wind speed and/or direction in a relatively small area -- which causes a shearing effect. ATC has some wind-shear detection equipment in some places, but your pilot report (PIREP) is invaluable. Ideally, the Tower wants to know what loss or gain of airspeed the pilot encountered on final; so if you experience a change in airspeed from, say, 150 knots to 130 knots on final at 500 feet, you should report it like this: "Citation Niner Golf Charlie, encountered (_____)." (Give the most complete answer.)
a. Wind shear, negative 20 knots at 500 (feet).
b. Wind shear, loss of 20 knots at 500 (feet).
c. Wind shear, microburst at 500 (feet).
d. Wind shear at 500 (feet) on final, max thrust required.
e. Either b or d.
8. Depending on budgets, airport location, and political muscle, ATC terminal facilities (Tower and Approach) may have wind-shear detection aids. Some of these tools include: TDWR, WSP, and LLWSAS. What does each acronym mean?
a. Terminal Doppler Wind Shear Radar, Weather System Processor, and Low Level Wind Shear Alert System.
b. Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, Weather System Processor, and Low Level Wind Shear Alert System.
c. Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, Wind Shear System Processor, and Low Level Wind Shear Alert System.
d. Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, Wind Shear System Prognostics, and Low Level Wind Shear Alert System.
e. Terminator Doppler Windshield Radar, Weather System Professor, and Low Life Wind Shear Aloha System.
9. What's a thunderstorm without lightning? It's like a knish without mustard, and even though lightning strikes are not a big threat to aircraft in flight -- the biggest threat is getting struck while walking across the ramp -- a wayward bolt can fry expensive parts. Therefore it's good to know that lightning is most likely to strike the aircraft when operating where temperatures are between (_____) and (_____).
a. -5 °F and +5 °F
b. +45 °F and + 85 °F
c. -5 °C and +5 °C
d. -15 °C and +15 °C
10. Eventually, you might be tempted to sneak beneath a thunderstorm to make a VFR approach into your homeport. Our rule-of-thumb for doing that: Don't! Often the visibility can be quite good where the rain isn't falling, but severe turbulence can be expected beneath a thunderstorm, especially when the relative humidity is low in any layer between the surface and 15,000 feet.
a. True
b. False