St. Elmo

It is 5 a.m., somewhere in the vicinity of Cedar Rapids, IA. The altimeter shows 9,000 feet and the company has been good about making sure I've had an autopilot for a pair of long, hard charters.

I started my engines in Omaha an hour earlier and Lansing, my destination, is still two hours away. Yesterday I departed home base for Omaha at 3:35 a.m. then flew to Denver, dropped my cargo and returned to a hotel room and a mildly successful attempt at a good night's sleep.

Outside it has been snowing at altitude for the past 20 minutes or so and I've been shining my required-by-FAA-regulation 2D-Cell flashlight on the wings, engine nacelles, prop spinners and tip tanks looking for signs of icing every few minutes. All the places ice tends to show up first on a 310 are clean, which is what I'd expect flying through snow.

For some strange reason I still get a kick out of the fact that it can be snowing at altitude and raining on the surface.

As is my custom, I've dimmed the instrument lights as much as possible in cruise and relish in my dark, warm cocoon hurtling through the night sky.

As I look around in the darkness my eye is drawn to a dim flash of purplish-blue. Curious that I should be able to see anything out ahead in the night sky I lean forward to shield my eyes from what little light still exists in the cabin.

Slowly it dawns on me that the flashes I'm seeing aren't far ahead in the distance but dancing on my windscreen, just a few feet from my face.

Then I notice several pools of deep blue light about the size of a silver dollar glowing along the seam the de-ice hot-plate makes with the windscreen and my sleep-deprived brain begins the trouble-shooting process.

The hot-plate is turned off so I'm fairly certain it's not a short circuit about to set my airplane on fire. Then I notice more deep blue pools and strange steaks of purple along the lower edge of the windscreen where it meets the fuselage.

I break out my flashlight and check my fingernails for a telltale blue tinge of hypoxia. They are pink, just like always. Convinced that I am not hallucinating the trouble shooting process continues.

Finally it dawns on me, I'm seeing what is either St. Elmo's Fire or some sort of static build up.

It is stunningly beautiful.

I've only read about St. Elmo's Fire, never seen it, and my limited recollection is that it's probably harmless.

I sit transfixed by the sight and turn off all the cabin lights so I am sitting in total darkness, with only the drone of the engines and glow from my wingtip position lights giving any positive indication that I am still aloft and moving through the Iowa sky at more than three-miles every minute.

Out of curiosity I reach out to touch the windscreen. Miniscule shafts of deep blue light arc between the charged windscreen and my finger and I laugh out loud as I slowly move my hand around and watch the corresponding motion in the plasma just a few millimeters of Plexiglas away.

It tickles.

Perhaps then this is what John Gillespie Magee Jr. meant when he wrote “Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

It is an incredibly subtle show, almost like a series of tiny Northern Lights. Only a few spots along the hot plate stay constant pools of deep bluish-purple. The rest dance about, growing and receding in a total universe of perhaps two inches.

For 10 minutes I sit mesmerized, playing with my tiny light show. No radio traffic interrupts the moment for nobody else is flying at such an absurd hour on a Saturday morning, at least not in my vicinity.

Then the glow of my wing tip lights changes in quality, it is more diffuse. I am out of the snow and into cloud. I break away from playing with my windscreen and check the outside air temperature even though I already know the answer. It is hovering at 27 degrees.

Reluctantly I turn my attention away from the windscreen, but by now the show is over and there is nothing to look at.

Interior lights up a tiny bit I grab my flashlight and shine it outside. It confirms what I already know from the jagged prism I can see building around my wing tip lights: I am picking up ice and picking it up fairly quickly.

Lake Michigan lies ahead and I have no intention of flying over it covered in ice. I cast a last, hopeful glance at my windscreen but it is vacant.

There is serious work to be done and I key up the microphone to request a climb to get out of the ice.

My electrical friends are behind and below me now, hopefully looking for another pilot riding alone through the darkness to enchant.

Yes, I know it's been a while since I've posted. I'm sorry but I was waiting for something really worth writing about to happen. Luckily it did.