What a delicious taste of summer we had last week. It started smoothly as temperatures gradually rose during the previous Saturday and Sunday. My nightly rounds on Monday were almost a vacation, with light winds, few clouds and temperatures that were well above freezing. With little to do, and the first light of morning revealing the details of the undercast spread below me, I did a lot of sightseeing on the way back to Elmira.
I claim no psychic insight to the weather, but my attention was drawn to a ridge of puffy cumulus clouds that protruded from the top of the flat deck of stratus clouds that laid below me. They formed a long ridge that extended as far as I could see to the Southeast. I wondered if it might be the first signs of disagreement between the grumpy old winter weather and the warmer and more rambunctious air swirling in from the south. Winter loosens its grip grudgingly, but the new sounds of the robins' song and the peepers' chorus made it hard to be concerned.
Tuesday night was supposed to be as warmer and more pleasant than Monday night, but our summertime evening was ambushed by a flow of cold air from a high pressure area in the Canadian Maritimes. This "back door cold front" arrived from the east rather than the west, and caught the forecasters off guard. The result was the line of thunderstorms that stretched from Rochester through New Jersey, starting just before my departure for Newark.
It was an interesting ride. By the time I leveled off at 9000 feet, I was flying in heavy snow which was periodically illuminated by flashes of lightning. Sometimes the flashes were distant, but sometimes the lightning bolts were visible through the snow, and filled the cabin with arc- welder brilliance. For half an hour I weaved along my course, following the hints provided by the plane's weather radar. By the time I finally got past the storms, I was framing serious questions about the career choices that had had put me in this place.
Like April showers bringing May flowers, my questions were answered the very next morning with a parade of spectacular cloudscapes which the night's storms had left behind. Departing Newark, the clouds were thick, wet, and gray, all the way up to my cruising altitude of 8000 feet, but they were warm enough that ice was no problem. I sat there and droned through the nothingness of a night sky cloaked in cloud.
As I moved farther inland the clouds fell away from my altitude, just as the sky was brightening with the light of dawn. For almost an hour I was treated to a private tour of the unearthly landscape of the sky. Broad plains of undulating white were bounded by sheer escarpments or distant mountains that faded into the pink light of the east. Sometimes these mountains ringed imaginary oceans of haze that floated ships of small clouds.
For a while there was a peek- a- boo game, where the plane would fly through a ridge of clouds and abruptly reveal a sharp chasm or peaceful mountain valley cloudscape on the other side. Just to keep me in touch with reality, there was an occasional hole in the clouds, affording a quick glimpse of the earthly world way below. I was in a land of pink and white, blues and grays, night into day, but down below it was still dark and featureless except for the scattering of electric lights.
It was a week of contrasts, warm and cold, bright and dark, fire and ice, as the opposing forces of winter and summer stirred across the land. In a span of five days the shiny coin of adventure flipped through the air, alternating its faces of fear and fascination.