The weather, typical of the Bay Area in February, had been really iffy all day. Before I left for the airport, there'd been a two-hour window of nice weather over the house, so I decided to push it and not cancel my landing lesson. At the airport, a shower had just drenched the runway, so I figured the lesson was out. Plus, airport weather reported an 18-knot quartering tailwind. Unh-uh, no way I'm doing pattern work in that. But I waited to hear what my instructor had to say. He called airport weather and put it on speaker, and now it reported wind variable at 3 knots--perfect, even with a wet runway. Well, what the heck. We went out and preflighted the 170.
As I finished, we noticed an ominous black cloud looming over the southern part of the airport. Bad sign again, but at the rate the clouds had been whipping over, maybe we could wait it out. I'd had to call off a previous taildragger lesson due to fouled plugs on the 170, and I did not want to call off this lesson, but reluctantly, I said things didn't look good. My instructor looked at the sky a while longer, then said, "We'll taxi to runup and see where it is then." With luck, the cloud will have passed over by the time we were ready for takeoff.
I expected a long taxi to the far end of Runway 11, which we usually use during rainy weather. However, just as we reached the first taxiway, Tower reported a switch to Runway 29 instead. Meaning we took the closer runup. While the timing wasn't quite right, it had me hoping the weather was clearing up for at least a little while.
The first sign that something was not quite right happened when the stall horn went off during my first climb. I climb conservatively, and I was surprised enough that I nearly pulled back before my brain engaged and I shoved the nose down. The first few landings went uneventfully until the ominous black cloud, still looming in the southwest, decided to express itself. On downwind, the plane began to bounce, and on final, my instructor said, "Hey, look at that crosswind! Have fun!" The wind sock was standing rigid, straight across. Well, talk about trial by fire. In all my previous lessons, I'd had the wind either straight down the runway or off five to ten degrees. Now I wrestled against my urges to straighten out the airplane and keep one wing down to counter the gale. It was hard work. On the ground, I got the signal to take off again.
The weather worsened. On downwind, I felt like I could reach out and grab that ugly cloud looming over my right shoulder. On this final, the winds were roaring. We came down, tilted hard against the crosswind, and the moment the right main touched the runway, the cloud opened and a solid wall of water came crashing down, obscuring forward visibility. I don't know why my instructor didn't take over, but I flew through the rest of the landing, mashing hard on those rudder pedals and feeling him do the same. In retrospect, it was the first time I'd ever seen him sweat.
And ironically, we took off again. Climbed out of the rain and into a patch of clear sky about a mile away, where we circled and listened to the radio and waited. The airliners landing on the parallel runway asked for wind checks, and we heard, "One seven zero at one eight, wind shear advisory. Two, two zero at two three, wind shear." Way out of my league. We stayed in the sun and stared down at the water that had been dumped on the streets below, effectively turning them into canals. Occasionally I got too close to the storm cell and got rattled for it. I didn't mind the circling--we had plenty of fuel, and I could work on my rudder skills in the turns.
Finally, the cell moved along, and the wind calmed to something a little more reasonable, though once we got kicked hard in the tail by a bit of turbulence on final. We did two or three more landings before calling it a day. I was exhausted, and my clothes and the pillow behind my back were soaked with sweat. I think I probably came closer to cheating an accident today than at any other time in my flying experience. Actually, I'm really not sure of the exact details in the flight, like which landing it was that we got dumped on or the precise velocity of the winds. I didn't have time for details. I didn't have time to get scared, either, and it didn't really hit me until way after we had returned to the club. Then I sat down and didn't move for a while.
Lessons learned? Respect little black clouds, for they can ruin my day. What to do when little black clouds try to ruin my day (would it have occurred to me to just sit up there and circle, outside of the mess?). I don't plan to fly solo in weather like that, in any aircraft, unless I am fleeing from gun-toting assassins.
But boy, do I have a great tale for the next hangar-flying session!