To our east the greens and browns of the Florida landscape stretch off into the distance, terminating at the hazy blue horizon line. Or maybe it’s the sandy beaches of the Atlantic coast. From this distance it is hard to tell. More defined, the view to the west is of the aquamarine waters of the Gulf of Mexico laying beneath a scattered layer of puffy white clouds. 26,000 feet below us, an oil tanker works its way towards the entrance to Tampa Bay, kicking up a muddy wake that stretches back for miles across the blueish-green waters below.

Fifty miles back, the jetway we’ve just left in Sarasota is probably still basking in the pale Florida winter sun. The Charlotte we left to come down (and now are heading back to) was a frigid 30 degrees making the 55 degrees in Sarasota feel very pleasant. Despite our short turn time the Flight Attendants, my FO and I all managed to spend several minutes standing outside on the jetway steps enjoying the sunshine and relative warmth, laughing as we watched the rampers move around the airplane dressed in long pants and heavy winter coats.

And now the warmth is just a memory. As ATC clears us to a fix just to the east of Atlanta the latest Charlotte weather pops up on our flight computer. It’s warmed all the way up to 35 degrees now, which actually doesn’t sound bad when I compare it to the 20 degrees and snow we left behind in Dayton at 6am this morning. I let out a small sigh realizing that the “warmth” of Charlotte, like Sarasota, will be short lived as we will be heading back for Dayton almost as soon as we land and unload.

The plane wiggles its tail and turns inland on the new course. Out my window the waters of the Gulf fade into the distance and soon are just a memory to be rediscovered on my next trip down here. Until then I’ll just have to imagine that somewhere a warm jetway is sitting in the sun while nearby a tanker pushes its way through bright blue-green waters, its props kicking up a muddy path behind it.

We are headed north, climbing underneath a solid overcast. The southern Virginia landscape of hills and valleys is sliding smoothly by below us while the FO and I discuss the news of the day. Lately, the news has been the same. Service reductions, quality of life cuts, mergers and the threat of furlough and shut down, with the economy less than stellar, the industry is a mess. The trick of course is not getting distracted, as was highlighted by the unlucky Northwest crew who missed Minneapolis last week. Our focus shifts from the latest rumor to the task at hand as we climb into the cloud bases and the plane starts bouncing.

Somewhere ahead of us a King Air advices ATC that he is picking up moderate rime ice and needs another altitude right away. Center drops him down to 20,000 feet and asks the King Air driver to keep him advised. Ice can be serious business and there is no reason to mess around. We have a hot air heated wing and engine inlets as well as electrically heated windshield and probes and despite all that I still keep a close eye on ice buildup on the airframe. With that in mind I glance over at the total air temp gauge which displays the outside air temperature from a probe just below the FO’s side window: +4 degrees, prime icing conditions.

We climb another 1000 feet to 24,000 and the temperature drops to +1 degree. Within seconds a white crust of ice is starts to form on the nut that attaches the windshield wiper blade to the arm. It always starts there, just like static electricity, and then spreads to bigger surfaces as the icing increases. I look up at the overhead panel and see my FO is on the ball and has already turned on the wing and cowl anti ice switches. I go back to staring at the wipers as the ice buildup continues to grow and spread. The arm of the wiper blade now looks like somebody has spread a layer of frosting along it. Looking back I can see the last few feet of the wing and it looks silver and clear of ice. The winglets, which are unheated, are carry a thin load of ice now which means the tail which is also unheated probably has some ice buildup as well.

I’m still not overly concerned. If we need to we can easily descend back into clear, warmer air below us or climb a few thousand feet hirer. Although ice can form at any temperature between about +10 and -40 it normally is found only a small portion of that range, around zero degrees. Climbing will lower the temperature and hopefully get us out of the ice. I take a quick look at our flight computer and realize that we only have about 100 miles to go and climbing isn’t going to be too beneficial. Despite the almost inch of ice covering most of the wipers now the windshield is remaining clear and what I can see of the wings are clear as well. Our anti ice system is keeping up fine and as long as things don’t get worse we are ok to stay where we are.

Minutes later ATC descends us back down to 15,000 feet. Passing through 22,000 we exit the cloud bases and the temperature starts climbing again and the ice starts to shrink as it melts. As the integrity of the structure starts to break down, pieces fly off into the slip stream and zip by the window. By the time we get to 15,000 the ice is gone and the FO reaches up to turn off the anti ice switches. It’s good to know the system is working because it could be a long winter.

Location: 30 miles Northwest of Beckley, WV

Altitude: 31,000 feet and slowly climbing

Airspeed: 71% of the speed of sound

Temperature: -41 degrees Celsius

A 170 mile an hour west wind is blasting the left side of the airplane as we head north towards Detroit and our last stop of the day before we can head back to Charlotte and the end of the trip. To compensate for the wind the autopilot has pointed the nose of the airplane about 45 degrees to the left of our course, a number that has grown progressively larger over the last 5 minutes as the wind has increased. The good news for us is that we aren’t heading directly into it, and only about 30 miles an hour of that is pushing us backwards. The bad news is a combination of the wind and the high clouds are causing an incredibly rough ride.

15 minutes earlier and well south of the Beckley VOR we had leveled off at our planned final altitude of 30,000 feet but after getting slammed around for 10 minutes we had put our faith in a report of a mostly smooth ride from another airplane at 34,000 feet. We asked for 34,000 as well but the best ATC could do was give us 32,000. Now slowly clawing our way higher with a full load of passengers and both the wing and engine anti ice systems robbing the engines of thrust I was beginning to wonder if we’d make it to 32,000. The book said we could but a rapidly dropping airspeed indicator and a minuscule climb rate was making me wonder.

Finally, as we passed 31,400 feet the airplane decided it was ok with climbing and the airspeed started increasing again. Unfortunately the bumps did as well. After a particularly hard series of jolts I decided to make a quick PA, although verbally reassuring the passengers that we probably weren’t all about to die wasn’t help all that much with people who were suffering from motion sickness. Mission accomplished I went back to splitting my attention between the airspeed tape (which was now holding steady), the altimeter (which was creeping higher), the vertical speed indicator (which was bouncing all over the place in the bumps but holding a positive rate) and the weather radar which is all but useless at higher altitudes as it doesn’t paint frozen precipitation, which at -40 degrees is pretty much all there is.

The ride at 32,000 (once we finally got there) was a little bit better, but the next 30 minutes of flight time as we crossed over West Virginia and Ohio was mostly spent just holding on to something. ATC eventually started us back down again and as we passed between cloud layers the ride settled down. Once we descended below 26,000 the ride smoothed out completely, making me wonder if maybe we should have descended instead of climbed to find a better ride.

Now just 80 miles to the north Detroit was reporting light snow and 2 ½ miles of visibility with a 1000 foot ceiling. That wasn’t good news. The forecast had been for a mostly nice day and we hadn’t gotten an alternate were carrying just our minimum 45 minutes of emergency fuel. The situation got even worse when, as I was discussing options with the FO another weather report came out showing the visibility was now down to 1 ½ miles due to the snow which had picked up. A quick look at a map (I actually carry a Rand McNally road atlas to get a general sense of location) showed Cleveland or Akron were probably our best bets but with only 45 minutes of fuel, and even less if we actually shot the approach and had to go around, those would be long shots. If stuff got really bad I figured Flint or Grand Rapids would work, although we didn’t have approach plates for either place. I took a second to mentally kick myself for not requesting more fuel back in Charlotte but then moved on to dealing with what was rapidly turning into mess.

15 minutes out had us descending through 12,000 feet and breaking into clearer skies. A frozen over Lake Erie was visible below us, and in the snowy hazy to the north we could just make out the lake shore. Cleveland Center passed us off to Detroit approach who turned us towards the airport. Now down at 5000 feet the snow covered ground was clearly visible below us but there was a low layer of clouds to the northwest with snow squalls visible on the leading edge of them. Approach turned us on to the ILS and dropped us down to 3000 feet. As the needles centered up I could just make out the end of the runway 10 miles away, right at the edge of the cloud line.

Approach handed us off to tower who cleared us to land. At about 1500 feet the runway momentarily disappeared behind a cloud but seconds later we broke through and it came back into sight. I mentally thought through a landing on a partially snow covered runway (get it down, don’t worry about softness, get the reversers out and be gentle with the brakes) as the computer called out 500 feet. By 200 feet I could see enough detail to realize the runway was mostly clear although there was snow blowing over the surface. At 100 feet the power started coming out and by 40 feet it was gone. A last second correction for a gust of wind and we were down, on the centerline.

Rolling clear and on to the taxiway several thousand feet later I took a second to let out a long breath. We were down and the bumps and fuel worries were over. However, we were running over an hour late because of an earlier delay which meant we would be quick turning and heading right back into the bumps, the wind, and the ice and snow.

And the funny thing is I knew I was going to love every minute of it.

Yes, I’ve been remiss about updating this. I’ve been busy… doing nothing.

Yesterday I finished up a four day trip which served as an introduction back into winter operations. As was the trip turned out to be pretty easy, but with the weather system moving through it could have been a whole lot worse. All of our flying was confined to the southeast (with one quick trip up to DC and another to Lexington). While we did turns to mostly sunny North and South Carolina other crews fought through a early season Northeastern snow storm. At one point while sitting in the plane on the ramp in sunny Greenville, SC I got a phone call from a friend who was currently grounded in Scanton, PA due to 1/8th of an inch of slush on the runway and windblown snow.

Despite not having to deal with frozen precip (we didn’t even deice the whole trip) we did have pretty gusty winds near the surface and strong winds aloft for the majority of the trip. This manafest itself in bumpy rides down low and increased flight times as we fought against 150mph + headwinds. The worst was a flight from DCA down to Huntsville, AL that normally takes about 1:15 in the air. With the winds as they were it took us 1:54 from the time the wheels came up until my FO managed a nice landing on the 12,000 foot long alternate shuttle landing runway in Alabama.

This was also the first 4 day trip I’d flown in a while, and the shear length of it (I’m used to one and two day trips now) coupled with the early morning show times (6:15am, 4:50am, 6am and 6:15am) made for a long trip. Of course it didn’t help that I got home at 5pm on the last day and had to be back at the airport at 5am the next day to sit hot reserve.