Geoff writes: Judith is still sulking so I’ll do this blog post.

We were pretty optimistic about the day, with the only problem being deciding whether to drive the 55 miles to the Malverns, or the five miles to Corndon. In general, in an easterly, we prefer the Malverns – you can ridge soar it till a thermal comes through, and there are more pilots there usually, so lots of wind dummies. So in spite of a nice looking sky here – though there was a breeze in the garden – we set set off to the Malverns.

The closer we got, the more haze, more cloud, and less sun there was. In the end, we stopped about 16 miles from the Malverns, and phoned up Ian and Martin, who were both there. The conclusion was that the chances of lauching were minimal, because of the strong winds there; and the chances of an XC were minimal too, because of the lousy sky.

We checked with Mark Leavesley, and the sky at Corndon was still good, so we turned around to go there, expecting the sky to clear on the way. It didn’t, the clag and haze was spreading northward, as was the wind. We got to Craven Arms, and the chance of flying seemed very remote, so we gave up and went for tea with Graeme and Odette, then home to do some gardening.

In fact, there were some XCs at the Malverns, but just one thermal jobs, which, given the wind, amounted to 20 – 30 km. We almost certainly would not have launched because of the wind. So we probably made the right decision.

As Dave T says below, the Mynd area is really having a terrible season so far this year.

Judith writes: I’m not actually sulking, just a little amazed that the forecast could be so wrong. So here’s the pressure chart for the day:


So a little wind, but hardly 25mph or more!

Soundings:

Where’s the cloud?

And RASP:

So how come it was grey, overcast and howling? Arrgghhh!

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