The Texas flood tragedy unfolded as I was making my way back to Florida from Idaho so I’m just catching up on the situation. How useful have helicopters been in rescuing people washed away or trapped by rising waters? I found one video of a hoist out of a tree. I think it is an Astar (can’t read the tail number due to the low resolution and what seems to be continuing rain).
I spoke to a friend in Austin and his house, in a neighborhood that is up a steep hill, was fine, but he was out helping a friend an hour northwest of Austin whose house became “a disaster”.
This weather radar loop is frightening:
Was surprised to see that one out in the weather. Spinning around in the harness would be pretty scary.
I would think bad weather would make flying a helicopter difficult. I would be interested to learn the particulars. What does a helicopter pilot look for in a weather report?
MMM: The typical helicopter is flown under visual flight rules (VFR) and the weather considerations are more or less the same as for flying an airplane visually except that you might be willing to accept a lower ceiling and visibility because you’re not planning to fly more than 500′ above the ground or fly faster than 80-100 knots. Visibility is more important than ceiling because when you’re flying low you don’t want to hit obstacles such as cell phone towers, powerlines, etc.
Commenting on the radar loop: I lived in Austin TX until recently, and while there I learned about “dry line” thunderstorms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_line — These are wicked storms that seemed to most often come at night. They are notoriously hard to forecast – I found weather forecasts in Austin less accurate than almost anywhere else I’ve been. Much of this was because if the forecasters miss the ‘dry line’ location by more than a few miles, the entire forecast changes, even inside of the following 12 to 24 hours.