The Cloudbase Mayhem podcast is where you will find fascinating and educational interviews with the best free-flight pilots in the world. If you fly a hanglider or paraglider, if you fly acro or cross country, the Cloudbase Mayhem podcast is where we glean how the great pilots of the world get there. Hosted by Red Bull X-Alps pilot, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and current holder of the North American foot launch record, Gavin McClurg. Follow me on Instagram @gavinmcclurg or on Facebook @ facebook.com/gavinnmcclurg or Twitter on @cloudbasemayhem.
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Episode 120- Lisa Verzella and Understanding XCSkies and Weather Forecasting
Lisa Verzella flew hang gliders for over 20 years (many of those competitively), has been flying paragliders also for over 20 years and is a professional meteorologist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. She competed on the US World’s team in 1998 and 2008 in hang gliding. This show is in two parts. The first is our typical audio podcast that goes into Lisa’s vast and fascinating history of chasing airtime, and the second is a video tutorial of a deep dive into XCSkies and Lisa’s full weather flow (ie all the stuff she uses before she gets to XCSkies to identify good days to go flying). The learning here is VAST- this is truly an information packed show. Get out your paper and pens and build your weather forecasting knowledge!
Useful links that Lisa mentions in her weather flow:
A great internet weather resource, TropicalTidbits.com.
Here are the direct links I would use for Upper Air and Satellite, if you’d like to replace or just add these to the others.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=ecmwf-ens®ion=us&pkg=mslp_pcpn_frzn&runtime=2020051212&fh=12
Satellite:
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/sat/satlooper.php?region=atlpac-wide&product=wv-mid
Upper Air Analysis:
http://weather.utah.edu/index.php?runcode=2020050712&t=gfs0.25&r=WE&d=SY
-click on Current
-shows (clockwise from upper left): high/low pressure; uplift; sfc pressure/precip; 700 mb winds/RH sfc to 500mb
National Weather Service:
www.weather.gov
-surface chart: https://www.weather.gov/forecastmaps
-satellite: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/visible-and-infrared-imagery
(takes a minute to load, slide scroll bar down for latest timing)
-Radar (use local home NWS page)
-Forecast Discussion (use home NWS page, scroll down to find product)
-Soaring Forecast (if available on your home page, under Aviation)
XC Skies:
xcskies.com
-$4.95/month, well worth it!
Lisa Verzella, Meteorologist National Weather Service Salt Lake City
hang glider and paraglider pilot
lisaverzella@gmail.com
Show Notes:
* Back in the early days of hang gliding
* Competition hang gliding, and the world’s team
* The transition to paragliding from Hang gliding
* Eagles in the Flesh, Erik Kaye
* The wild bunch vs the community as a whole
* Getting a handle on the big picture of weather and increasing possibilities and lowering risk
* Finding narrow windows
* Getting more airtime from understanding weather
* Flying becomes your life and how to juggle it all
* Hang gliding vs paragliding
* Dealing with turbulence and best practices for longevity
* CUACSA
* Safety tips and risk mitigation
Mentioned in this show:
Kari Castle, Linda Salmone, Ken Hudonjorgensen, Honza Rejmanek, Gavin Morris