Circles in the sky

The forecasts for the day were decent. Not great, but not poor enough to cause any serious concern.

Still, I was uneasy. The little corner of my brain that is on the lookout for trouble was making cautionary noises.

Why I did not, and still do not, know. It was just one of those things. What I was seeing out the window was enough to leave me with a deep mistrust of the forecast. Pure instinct, a hunch and nothing more.

Watertown, SD, had been clear when I passed by some 30 miles to the north on my way to Aberdeen. This was encouraging since Aberdeen was low enough than an ILS was called for and it was nice to know should things go totally cockeyed I could head for Watertown, a mere 60 miles away.

Even better, Watertown was my next stop. It might just be an easy day after all.

Still, something was nagging at me. I had seen large areas of low clouds, fog and mist on the 90-minute flight between Minneapolis and Aberdeen. There were also huge areas that were perfectly clear.

Normally those clear areas would have been welcome news, but it was the unevenness of it all, the randomness of the interplay between fog and cloud and clear that had me worried.

In Aberdeen the line guy looked mildly surprised when I asked him to top the airplane with fuel. Normally I don't bother refueling on this run. It is barely 3 hours of flight time in an airplane that holds 5 hours of fuel.

I checked the weather and liked what I saw. Watertown was still clear, although the visibility had dropped to 8 miles. Marshall, my next stop, was still consistent at 1,200 overcast and 3 miles, just as it had been for much of the day.

Thirty minutes later I was level at 5,000 feet for the short trip down to Watertown.

A quick check of the weather on my GPS and I let out a groan. The fog had moved in and Watertown, which only an hour earlier had been clear was now below ¼ mile visibility.

My day had just gotten complicated.

A quick call to Minneapolis Center and I was cleared to the outer marker to hold and wait for the weather to improve.

I was optimistic. I could easily see the ground perhaps 10 miles to the East and West of the airport and could almost see the Watertown VOR, just a few miles north of the field itself, from my position in the hold.

It was, I was hoping, a temporary situation. I mean, it was clear just a few miles away so surely the fog wouldn't last.

Throttles and props way back, mixtures pulled until the engines were barely running I went into fuel savings mode. No sense in blasting around in circles at cruise power burning 200 pounds of fuel an hour.

As I flew circle after circle a picture emerged.

To the south the fog was even more widespread, much wider. A slender protuberance, perhaps 15 miles wide and 40 miles long had extended ahead and covered the Watertown airport.

It looked, both literally and metaphorically, like a giant middle finger pointed directly at me.

Time to make a decision. The fog had not moved in the past 30 minutes and I still had a stop to make in Marshall before heading home.

Adding to my growing concern, the sun was beginning to set and I expected the fog to increase rather than decrease as the temperatures dropped.

Enough then. A call to center and they cleared me on to Marshall. Leaving the hold I took my time turning on course to fly directly overtop the airport for one last look.

Nothing. I could see the far western edge of the lake that abuts the Watertown airport but that was it. No town, no runways, no approach lighting, nothing.

Power back up, and turned on course I had barely finished re-programming the GPS when center came back on the frequency to tell me our company had called them and wanted me to divert to Brookings, SD.

A mental shrug of the shoulders and a confession to ATC: I was fine with going to Brookings but had no idea where it was and would really appreciate it if they could pass along the identifier for the airport since I hadn't a clue.

Another quick reprogramming of the GPS revealed KBKX to be just 36 miles to the south.

I hurriedly flipped through my approach charts to find one for the Brookings airport, discovered much to my relief that they had an ILS, tuned in the automated weather and began laughing out loud.

Brookings, the divert airport my company had so kindly seen fit to find and point me toward, was at minimums: 200 foot ceilings and ½ mile visibility in mist and freezing fog.

Center, obviously not quite seeing the humor in the situation came on to confirm we were both looking at the same weather report.

For some reason, it seemed, the center controller thought diverting from an airport reporting ¼ mile visibility to one reporting ½ mile when there were dozens of nearby airports that were virtually in the clear seemed odd.

I explained that I indeed had the same weather, that somebody at my company had a strange sense of humor and that since Brooking was reporting ½ mile visibility I was legal to attempt the approach.

A quick “y'all be careful out there” clearance (“Cleared for an approach to the Brookings Airport, change to advisory frequency approved, report your missed approach back with me or cancellation through radio”) and center had washed their hands of me and I was alone on the approach.

The approach itself was routine and the runway lights oozed into view right about the time I was thinking of going missed, just as I had hoped, so I dropped full flaps and landed in the fog, thankful I had seen fit to fill my tanks in Aberdeen.

A quick text message to my director of operations (“You sick bastard. KBKX 200 and 1/2”) let him know I was still alive and elicited an equally sympathetic response ( “:-)” ) and I hunkered down to wait for my freight to be driven in.

As it turns out, the weather at Brookings had been far better when the decision was made to have me divert there and that the fog was moving in much quicker than anybody could have imagined.

Sioux Falls, which I had initially considered as a divert airport because much of the freight I had on board gets driven down there anyway, went down below ¼ mile and closed for hours. Watertown, which had never been forecast to go below 2 miles, stayed below ¼ mile for much of the night.

Even on the trip home, after spending 90 minutes on the ground in Brookings nervously checking the weather and hoping it remained at ½ mile or better so I could depart, mighty Minneapolis-St. Paul International closed briefly due to the fog.

In the end it took every ounce of speed and every shortcut I could muster to get in to our home airport, just 16 miles north of Minneapolis-St. Paul International, landing literally a minute or two before the fog completely covered the airport.

The only saving grace for the evening was that I somehow had seen fit to fill my tanks in Aberdeen, which left me with plenty of fuel should I have arrived home just a few minutes later and needed to divert yet again.