Have you ever thought that for aeroplane pilots, every day at work is a blue-sky day? Soaring above the clouds you might think that the weather isn’t such a big deal. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Pilots are dependent on weather information at every stage in their flights. In this blog post, we discuss one crucial aspect of aviation weather that affects both pilots and passengers – turbulence.

The nature of turbulence

On Saturday 16 October 2010, many parts of New Zealand, especially South Island, experienced Foehn winds. During the approach to summer, eastern parts of both islands will get more warm Foehn winds under suitable conditions. In this blog post I'll describe what the Foehn wind is and explain how it comes about. We'll start by looking at temperature reports from weather stations on Saturday 16 Oct 2010.