I can’t recall a day where there was as much confusion and disagreement among the different weather forecasts. SA Weather Service and NOAA were saying completely different things. Commercial broadcasts had a third opinion.   Everybody predicted storms somewhere – but nobody agreed where they would be. I finally gave up and decided on a simple plan: I would fly as far as I could upwind until storms started appearing , and the downwind run would get me home on time before the storms hit the airport.

Wrong!  About 2.4 hours into the flight I was 135 km away when word came on the radio that there was a dust front line (caused by thunderstorm outfall) moving toward the airport. I broke off the task, climbed as high as I could, and started a glide back to the airport. At the same time Ed Downham started back from a similar distance but more to the east.

At 55 km out I could see the very clear wall of red dust moving in from my right to left and cutting off access to the airport. There was no option to go left because of the controlled airspace restrictions.  I was below glide but have seen these dust fronts before.  They can be used much like a ridge and I deliberately flew toward it to use the energy it was creating as it slid across my path ( the cold air from the front pushes the normal warm air up – which picks up the dust  much like a giant wedge).

The front had strong lift and both Downham and I climbed in it to 12,000 msl at which altitude we could see over the dust to the  the ground behind it. At that point ground radioed that the field wind had shifted to the west and was now blowing steady at 50kts (!)  which is also common when a storm front passes here in Africa. Ed and I discussed strategies and we decided that since visibility was OK behind the front we would just circle the airport (to get a sense of wind drift) and execute a high wind landing. I decided to hold the 420 lbs of water ballast right to the ground to give the Nimbus more stability and penetrating power into the howling wind. I flew the approach at 145 kph (90 mph) and zero flaps, with my base leg right over the fence.  That worked well, the landing went fine, and Downham landed about 2 minutes after me on the same runway.

My total time in the air was 3 hours 41 minutes. I flew 299 km.   Here is a picture from last year that shows what a dust front looks like as it leads the thunderstorm outfall. I was much closer to it today:

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