Then he's due to change planes in Pittsburgh for connecting flights all the way back home to Minnesota. Now, the reason his secretary had come into work that Saturday of the holiday weekend is because the senator had asked her to drive him to the airport. She doesn't know what has made him so upset. He's got tears streaming down his face, but all he'll say to her is, “I can't talk about it,” and, “I've gone too far to turn back.” She doesn't know what this means. His secretary asks him what's wrong, he won't explain. What he appears to be is emotionally distraught. He's got his head down on his desk, his head is buried in his arms. In simplistic terms, this could pull the wings off, with inevitably serious consequences.He's not sitting at his desk like usual.
"If the plane transitions suddenly to climbing or descending, and is flying too fast for the conditions, the plane can potentially become overstressed. "In extremis, turbulence can damage an aircraft," Gratton confirmed. But can turbulence damage a craft? And, if so, could it potentially cause a plane to crash or require a pilot to make an emergency landing? It can certainly come as a shock to be shaken around when on a plane, and the experience can range from rather uncomfortable to extremely scary. According to the Airplane Academy, an aviation resource website, "microbursts," a term used to describe particularly hazardous extreme winds, can see planes experience "downdrafts in excess of 2,000 feet per minute and surface winds in excess of 100 knots. Turbulence is relatively common around these clouds when updrafts and downdrafts converge. "Either around a cumulonimbus cloud, which routinely has high magnitude air currents around it, or around the edges of one of the jet streams." Jet streams are essentially rivers of wind high above in the atmosphere, and have a huge influence on climate, as they can push air masses around and affect weather patterns.Ĭumulonimbus clouds are commonly referred to as "thunderclouds," because they are, according to the U.K.'s Met Office, "the only cloud type that can produce hail, thunder and lightning." They are born from convection - warm air rising due to it being less dense than the surrounding atmosphere - and "exist through the entire height of the troposphere," the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere, which extends to about 33,000 feet (10,000 m) above sea level.
"There are two main places," Gratton said. So, where is a plane most likely to encounter such conditions? "Conversely, if the headwind rapidly increases, or the plane enters a rising column of air, this can cause it to suddenly climb." "If a plane is flying along at a constant speed and height, then suddenly the headwind reduces, or it enters a descending column of air, this can cause the aircraft to suddenly descend," Gratton explained. This immediate change in wind speed or wind direction happens over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere, and can occur at both high and low altitude, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The term "windshear," meanwhile, is used to describe a "sudden change" in wind velocity.
Turbulence is, according to the National Weather Service, "one of the most unpredictable of all the weather phenomena that are of significance to pilots." Planes are most likely to experience turbulence when they come into contact with a "relatively random large magnitude current, or a rising or descending column of air," Gratton added.
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