We actually just wanted to fly down, test some gliders somehow, well, then at some point it starts rumbling more clearly and we think, oops, I think there's something above us, and then we packed up, drove down, and the drive from Costa Lunga back then—that's maybe fifteen minutes—and by the time we were down, the hail was ten centimeters high on the road and it had almost ripped the trees out of the ground; we thought, wow, up there in the air, it looks completely different.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Nobby
Or we can do it differently, Norbert Fleisch, aka Nobby. And
I'm Lucian Haas at the microphone. Anyone who wants to paraglide safely should pay very close attention to one particular topic: the weather. Nothing is as variable and at the same time so determining for what we experience in the air. Because weather is everything that changes and moves the air. And as flyers, we inevitably have to adapt to it. Anyone who doesn't want to do that just by luck has to understand more about the weather, or at least try to understand it. Someone who has been practicing this for a long time is Norbert Fleisch, better known as Nobby in the flying scene. The dentist turned flight instructor has delved deeper and deeper into the subject of aviation meteorology over his now nearly 25-year flying career. Three years ago, his 350-page book Meteorology was published, in which he poured all his theoretical—but also experiential—knowledge about meteorology for paragliders.
If you're hoping to have all of this served up en passant in just one hour in this 47th episode of Podz-Glidz, I have to disappoint you right from the start. The path to becoming a weather expert isn't that simple. But in the conversation, Nobby does give many tips on how to acquire more weather knowledge. The 58-year-old talks about, among other things, how he goes about checking the weather himself, what signs to look for in the sky, and what to pay special attention to at the launch site and in the air. He also shares which weather risks, in his opinion, are most underestimated, and which very special weather experiences, both positive and negative, are deeply etched into his pilot's soul. Before we begin, a quick note: Podz-Glidz and the associated blog Looglights are available for free on the web, but they are not free of charge.
I invest a significant amount of working time into this as a freelance journalist. That means the podcast and blog are part of my livelihood. I would be very happy if you would help me as a supporter to maintain and expand this offering in its independent and ad-free form. You can find out how to become a supporter on the Looglights website, specifically on the "Support" page.
Nobby, I've noticed that in the German paragliding scene, all the well-known flight experts are actually... Take, for example, Volker Schwanitz from the DRV, the late Stefan Hörmann with his once-popular site Gleitsegelwetter, and also you as the author of what is currently probably the comprehensive meteorology book for paraglider pilots. None of them are real meteorologists; they're actually just self-taught. Why is that?
Yes, when I've met some meteorologists—whom I can actually count as my clients every now and then, both on paragliding trips and in seminars—and I always ask them, "Can you explain this or that to me? It's a great topic, the Mediterranean low; can you explain how a Mediterranean low actually forms?" Then I see them furrow their brows, the gears start turning, and off they go with formulas. And then I say, "No formulas, please, I want to understand it so I can pass it on, so that someone else can understand it." And then the gears turn again and they say, "Well, I can't without formulas." And that's when I realized that meteorologists nowadays operate very heavily based on model calculations, very heavily in mathematics and higher physics, and don't really do applied meteorology anymore.
That is what the Gleitschirm-Blog has to do out there, both in nature and when translating weather maps into reality. That's what they actually have to do. The meteorologists don't really do that anymore. They work differently. They try to create the models and move within their mathematical models. And we as hobby meteorologists—autodidacts, so to speak—we are trying to actually implement that.
In our case, flying is very often about, let's say, micrometeorological effects. Everything that plays out on such small scales and so on. So we're basically flying in the area that meteorologists classically still refer to as weather chaos, which they can't capture at all with their models. Does that simply put us outside the scope of their understanding?
We also fall out of it partly. In any case. The computational models aren't that small-scale yet. Although, whether small-scale would be much better is also the question with the chaos. So we do fall a bit out of the grid, actually. And we probably also fall out of the grid economically under certain circumstances. The question is, is it worth it for what meteorology has to do to work on such a small scale, so that the paraglider actually benefits from it, because who else benefits from working on such a small scale? And what does it cost to work on such a small scale? Because every little bit of smaller-scale work requires immensely more hardware requirements, immensely more costs that then fall on the meteorologists, on the weather services.
That's why I think we're falling short. We're just falling through the cracks at the moment.
That means the scene has to help itself; it needs its own freaks who study meteorology so deeply that they can then educate the others in the scene somehow. How did you actually get into this? What drove you to get so involved with meteorology?
On one hand, I come from a more technical background; my school education was more technically oriented, and then studying dentistry is also technically oriented. The interest was there from the physics side, though not from theoretical physics. And then I started paragliding very ambitiously. That happened in my early days, and I had one experience or another where I can actually say today that I tried to kill myself. And that was in the lack of understanding, in the ignorance of how to actually interpret the weather we were seeing, and the internet didn't exist back then. What does that actually mean? And based on that, I decided, man, this has to get better. I have to get this sorted out. It can't go on like this. I don't want to fly around the area blindly. I want to understand what I'm doing.
So, was you'd call, like, an awakening experience?
Yes, you could almost say that.
Was you experienced then, was that also sort of a near-death experience?
Yeah, no, it's not quite that bad. I mean, in one situation, we actually didn't fly. Luckily, we stayed on the ground, and the other time we did fly, but the wind didn't actually break through—meaning the downdraft back then.
If we had been in a different position in the air, it could have been a near-death experience, yeah, actually. So, after I realized what was actually happening, my knees were already shaking.
Tell me about three of your most intense flight weather experiences, where you'd say you only survived by luck. Just the background. What was going on?
Yeah, so the background was a weekend trip to the Burgesen back then. And the weather was gorgeous, blue skies, great, super. Everyone's toes are motivated, everyone's hair tips are motivated. The day before, the French Air Force had been practicing, so we weren't allowed to fly. The next day, of course, we were even more motivated. We'd probably already picked up on the fact that, well, there's a lot of wind at altitude. We somehow already knew that and only took off at half-slope height, and then we got annoyed that there was only one takeoff and no thermals, that we couldn't use the thermals. And when we landed, the French guys gave us a hard time. Yeah, they were like, "Hey guys, did you ever check the wind station on the mountain? At the Grand Ballon, it's 100 km/h wind. And there's a downdraft ten kilometers away from there."
And it hits you differently when you have a three-digit wind speed just 500 meters above you and ten kilometers away, and you just completely missed it. Yeah, and that was one thing. And the second was in Bassano, exactly the opposite, which is also very difficult for us paraglider pilots. An overcast sky where you can no longer see what's standing there. And yeah, you always think, it must be so black. Down there, the cloud base, if there's a thunderstorm. And it wasn't that black. And then it starts rumbling once. Now, of course, you know there's also a quarry behind Bassano where they often do blasting. That sounds similar. And we actually just wanted to fly down, test some gliders somehow. Otherwise, we wouldn't have driven up at all in that weather. But if you want to test things like that, you come up with such stupid ideas. Well, then at some point it starts rumbling again more clearly.
And then you think, oops, I think there's something over us. And then we packed up and drove down. And the drive from Costa Lunga, that was it, maybe fifteen minutes until we were down, and the hail was ten centimeters high on the road. It almost ripped the trees out of the ground. We thought, well, up there in the air, it looks completely different. So, also an overcast sky, a situation completely messed up.
So you really had no idea at that moment? In
At that moment, we really knew, well, maybe it's just a bit of a shower or something. But we thought, no, the clouds don't look black from below. And nowadays, they don't get that black. We just have to look at the rain radar. Nowadays we have other options. But that was 20 years ago, there was no rain radar where you could see shower cells everywhere. We just, both out of youthful recklessness, motivation, over-motivation, we just completely misjudged it. And we didn't see it either, of course, because of the overcast sky. So we made quite a few mistakes at the beginning, also in terms of his motivation, which he just set out for the day.
So that was also like a sort of awakening for you, I'd say—you're like, no, it can't be like this. I need to understand more of this so that something like this doesn't happen to me again, or so that I don't have something happen where I'm already in flight and then the thunderstorm starts over me and I didn't notice it. Yeah, exactly. And how did you teach yourself about the weather? I mean, if you go to a meteorologist and say, explain to me what the paraglider weather is like right now, then we have the problem we discussed at the beginning, that they come at you with formulas and after five minutes you say, no thanks, I don't need that right now. Or
you look at a book on flight meteorology for the big planes and there's a section on thermals, it says a three-liner, low-level turbulence, that was it. You can't really get anywhere with that. Yeah, well, I was lucky back then that,
Forgive me for mentioning Schubi's name in the free flight scene. I learned from Schubi too. Exactly, you learned from Schubi too. And Schubi was already very ambitious about weather back then. He had already given a seminar on the micrometeorology of paragliding, and by the time I learned 24 years ago, he had already done that. And he has physics and math as his teaching degree, so he has a scientific background. And that's when I started talking to him about it and went around Europe with him many, many times. And we actually thought to each other, man, how does something like this work? Now we have this and that weather map. How can that work? We have it in the video text. How can we put that together? We actually did a lot together, and later other colleagues joined us in doing that.
Of course, you read books. I was always reflecting, spent a lot of time outside, looked at weather forecasts and weather maps, and then tried to piece together what I had experienced. So, it was actually a long road to do that autodidactically. At some point, the books got better and at some point the internet came along. Then you could tap into completely different sources of information, and by then I was already reasonably proficient. But in the beginning, it was very important to have people who also enjoyed it, were interested, and could explain things to you. That was very important.
But that means your flight meteorology knowledge, as much theory as there is behind it, also has a lot to do with experiential knowledge from a lot of visual material. Always driving around, always looking, and then always trying to explain it with whatever theoretical material or weather maps or something you have available at the moment.
Yes, exactly. And on one hand, once you've bitten off a little and had some success with it, it's also very interesting. I sometimes get the feeling that many people get frustrated quickly. It is frustrating again and again. You always think you've understood something and then it's different again. Okay, then you can say, okay, I'll try to explain it further and then come back to the result, have fun, pat yourself on the back and say, great, I understood something again, or you eventually get discouraged or you don't have any fun at the beginning at all. I think you have to overcome a certain initial hurdle and then you can have fun with it. And then you realize, man, I can actually understand it. And you really always have to reflect, really categorize what you experience outside.
Then you get much better very quickly.
If paraglider pilots come to you today, beginners or maybe even advanced ones, who simply say, "I want to know more about flight meteorology myself and I want to learn it," what would you tell them or what do you recommend as the best way for them to go about it?
I would of course recommend reading a good book. Although I have to say, books are nice as a side thing. You don't learn from the book itself. I don't learn about the weather from my book. I really recommend a few simple weather websites. We can talk about which ones those are later. And I'd say, look at them every day. For me, I've set up my browser so that four or five weather sites pop up every time I open it. I just take a look at them. And then I look out the window. And then I try to make sense of it all. And I'd say, think about it: when you're on the slope, look at the weather map beforehand, think about what's actually happening right now, and ask other people. And I'd also recommend going, maybe find a flight trip where someone is there who knows about the weather, who has a knack for it—you can learn something there.
Ask other pilots. A lot of people have knowledge, but if you don't ask them, you won't get that knowledge at all. So, you have to talk a lot, you have to look a lot. Those are basically the two things. Reading alone is certainly not enough.
Would you say that, in general, paragliders don't actually talk enough about the weather? At least not in detail?
I would say, quite clearly, yes.
Why is that? I mean, weather is actually the factor that determines our aviation the most, because it's the most variable factor of all.
Yeah, I actually find that a bit difficult to explain too. I'm always surprised because if you look at the accident statistics, you could say 99 percent of all accidents have a meteorological cause. And on the other hand, I've been doing meteorology seminars for 20 years now, and I notice that they aren't booked very well. Even though, in terms of the ratio, they certainly aren't overpriced. And I ask myself, why is that? And I think it's actually right at the beginning—it's difficult to create any enthusiasm. Because at the start, it's like a mountain that people are standing in front of. And it's so difficult. And I never understand it. And so some people drop out. And with others, I sometimes get the impression that they prefer this self-explanatory approach, where everyone wants to explain it themselves and no one ever wants to ask someone who knows more, just so I can do everything myself.
It's also something I experience at launch sites every now and then, where I think, "You could have asked me." But nobody did. I actually find it a bit hard to explain. I guess I'm just not a psychologist enough for that.
That might also have something to do with how meteorology is taught in paraglider training as well.
Yes, I see a point there too. And I actually see even less of a point in how meteorology is taught in paraglider training, in normal pilot training. Because there is simply very little time. And there is little experience. That means when I teach the entire meteorology in the Aschen training, it's so abstract. No one can actually take that in and categorize it somewhere. The connection is missing. But where I see a major flaw is that in flight instructor training, meteorology also, in my eyes, gets far too little attention. And no enthusiasm is actually created there. That means the more flight instructors are truly proficient in meteorology—and I experience this every time I talk to aspiring flight instructors, and I've gone through it myself, and the DHV has now also approached me to change something—
that there's no enthusiasm. And if I don't have enthusiasm for something and don't know my stuff well myself, then I don't have any enthusiasm for teaching it either. That's the "unloved child" of the curriculum. I know many colleagues who avoid teaching meteorology because they aren't confident in it themselves. And if there were more enthusiasm or more emphasis on it in flight instructor training, I believe that could be passed on to the pilots differently. That's a huge point that sets in much earlier than in some of the pilot training programs. Yes, I have
I also did a flight assistant training once, and the topic of meteorology came up there too. It was a classic case—even though it was paragliding, it was a classic meteorologist who really had the problem of standing up there with his meteorology-training mindset, using formulas and all that. You could really see that with the other 20 assistants sitting in there, who weren't that knowledgeable, the whole thing just collapsed really quickly, and you noticed, "Yeah, now he's flown off with them." They just couldn't keep up anymore.
Exactly, you finish that training and you take meteorology along as the unloved child, and you carry that out into your own training as well. And I believe that's where there's such a big... well, from my understanding, I think that's one of the biggest problems.
You've actually written a really substantial book on the subject yourself—350 pages, that's—and a new edition is coming out soon. What did you personally learn that was actually new while writing this book?
Well, in principle, if you're teaching and you really want to teach, if you really want to impart knowledge to someone, you don't get dumber yourself. I notice that again and again when I do it. I've also learned to formulate things more precisely. For one thing, when you're writing and you can't explain something with your hands and feet, you have to argue more accurately. So I learned quite a bit there. Then I learned a lot more about large-scale weather—long-term things, all these high-altitude currents, all these, how should I put it, large-scale weather patterns; I learned quite a bit about how some of those connections work. Now, for the average pilot, those probably aren't so...
world-shaking, but on a small scale it wasn't even that much, because I already had a press, a presentation with 250 slides that the book is based on. That means, basically, all the learning effects happen bit by bit, every time I revised my presentation, every time I reworked a topic. Yes, I learned a lot about the Föhn again, for example. That was such a big point because I delved into it intensively once more.
And is there a specific weather topic that's interesting for paragliders, where you'd really say, that's actually really hard to explain properly in words?
Hmm, let me think. That's one, if you're asking for one.
Apparently, there are many.
The book has 350 pages.
One thing I experience that many people underestimate because they lack the imagination for it, in my opinion, are events related to showers and thunderstorms—meaning cold air outflows. You can actually explain them quite well in words, but you also have to do it and have the understanding for it. There are actually always people flying before showers or thunderstorms who have no understanding of what kind of wind can actually come out of a cloud like that. That's a point that even occurs during training. And a point that is even harder to explain is: what can still come half an hour or an hour after such a shower and thunderstorm? I know stories from pilots who say, "Out of nowhere, under a blue sky, it basically tore me apart."
In the lowest layers, just as I was about to start my landing. And I've experienced it myself, how one of those cold air outflows, a downburst coming out of a shower like that, can be traveling for part of an hour. That means the cloud is long gone, but I still have to factor in an hour later that something might still surprise me during my approach or at an altitude of 50 or 100 meters. And that is very hard to wrap your head around because, as you can imagine, it takes quite a bit of...
a certain amount of time. But that's not the downburst—the thunderstorm cloud was just over you—rather, it was a more distant thunderstorm cloud, and it just takes time for that cold air to push across the valley or trigger corresponding pressure waves that eventually reach you and then cause things to happen.
Exactly. For example, there's a cloud 50 kilometers away, and the air is falling there at 70 kilometers per hour because of me. It gets slowed down a bit and might reach you at maybe 40 kilometers per hour, but it takes about an hour to get to you. The cloud is long gone by then. It's blue sky, you're having a nice evening flight, and there's no sign left of the afternoon heat thunderstorm, but the cold air is on its way to you. We've actually seen things like that, experienced it ourselves. And I hear it in stories too, where people are like, I don't understand at all, what was going on? It was blue sky, there was nothing left.
So, would you consider thunderstorm-related conditions, especially in the Alps, to be the most dangerous weather situations, precisely because these long-range effects are so hard to assess?
Yes, I definitely would, I'd definitely say that, and I think there's a bit of a need to catch up on the understanding there.
Do you always land immediately when you see a thunderstorm?
Not necessarily. I mean, I think very carefully about the orography—where is the thing located? Is it in my valley area? Is there a mountain ridge in between? If so, it bothers me less. Then I look at how far away it is and try to piece it all together. I go down to land if I can no longer assess it, if I say it's too close in the evening, it's in my valley area, or let's say the time for the shower has passed and the cold air is gone, then I go down to land. In case of doubt, I always go down to land, actually. In case of doubt, I always go down to land because I don't feel comfortable; my imagination of what could happen there is just too great by now.
Are you also one of those tech-savvy people who turns on their phone while up in flight and says, "Now I'll pull up the rain radar and see where the actual thunderstorm cells are and how far away they are from me" and stuff like that?
No, actually not, I have to say quite clearly, no. I think that would have been me 20 years ago, during my "storm and drink" era, when I used to fly more ambitiously. Now, I consider myself a pleasure flyer, a hobbyist, and a scenic flyer. If I have to do that, then the enjoyment of the flight is just lost for me. I enjoy it when the weather is completely safe and I can assess it well, but if I have to do things like that mid-flight, I lose my motivation; I'd rather just land and look forward to the next day or the day after. So, as I said, my "storm and drink" era is over, and people who fly very ambitiously now, who really want to fly long distances, they obviously have to do that, but I'm not playing in that league anymore.
Weather preparation is also part of flight meteorology—preparing the weather assessment for the next day, or for the morning, for the day, and so on. How do you go about a weather check like that? What are the most important questions you work through for yourself?
So, in principle, I always work through the possible risks first. I actually always approach it from the negative side. I try to do a risk assessment. Does the day have any risks? That's the first thing I do. So then I check, for example, is the wind strong, is there a tendency for thunderstorms, is the Föhn in play, and so on. So that's one assessment—I try to figure that out so that I can first put the whole thing on a safe basis. And then as a secondary thing, if I'm motivated or if I have people with me who are motivated, whom I want to take out for a cross-country flight, then we consider how high and how far it can go. And from my side, I always have the large-scale weather situation. That's the first thing I think about.
What kind of large-scale air currents do I have at all? With that, I know if I have cold air, if the isobar spacing is very narrow, if I should expect wind, if I should expect little wind, and what the wind direction is; then I already know in the Alps if I'm on the right side or possibly the wrong side. I actually always have that in the back of my mind, and many classic weather patterns can be explained from that. And if I discover something basically boring and say, well, okay, there's high-pressure influence, little wind, the wind is coming from the right direction, then I say it's "boring," but I believe there's no risk. Then I think, okay, how strong is the high-pressure influence now? Has the high-pressure area been there for a few days already?
Could the thermals already be bad? Then I really take a look, yeah, I might check a thermals forecast. How high will it go today? What kind of climb rates are expected? What does the day bring in detail? But actually, the first thing I do is this rough check—is there anything that could go wrong for me? And I rule that out first. What I always do after that is actually stick my nose out or look at the sky and try to do the check again: does it all fit together? The plausibility check. And if what I see doesn't match what I saw on the weather maps, then I start researching more intensively. And if this first check doesn't show anything...
...said anything boring, but there are fronts in play, showers are forecast and stuff like that, then I really start to go into depth. I look at more detailed wind forecasts, more detailed shower forecasts, I look at...
wind stations and so on. I really try to get the exact real-time values.
Today, there are just an enormous amount of resources online for things like this, and more and more every day—way, way more than ten years ago. What are some of your favorite sites today? We touched on that earlier, and we can discuss it again later. But we're on that topic now. So, what are the sites you mainly use?
So, if I want to do the very basic, boring weather report—the one I also recommend to beginners—then I just take the warning situation report from the Unwetterzentrale. Even if we don't want to fly in severe weather, it's a simplified weather map explained in understandable German rather than meteorological jargon. Not everything is on there, but it gives you a very rough overview. You have the surface weather map with fronts and the isobar spacing, and if something is happening—like thunderstorms out of the ordinary or expected cold air outflows—it's often explained in German sentences, in understandable sentences. I find that quite practical for getting that first rough overview. Plus, there's also a rain radar for Germany included.
And then, what I like to watch, which I've also subscribed to, is the Meteor Parapont. That's a very well-known French paraglider. I find it very... I mean, he prepares a lot of things for us. Just how high the thermals go, how strong they are, what the wind is like at which altitude, and with many, many, many things he has in there. So you can really geek out there, but even for a beginner, there are a few things that are quite useful. Windy is standard nowadays, I think. And above all, I try to use Windy to simply compare the different models. Because there are weather situations where all four models say something different. And then I know, my own nose and my own picture of what I need to do is much more important than what I'm getting told there.
And if everyone agrees, it's just simple. And I find it's nice, everything that moves—I think it's very nice. It's more plausible, more tangible. I can see the wind flow. I get a better understanding of what's actually going on. I find Windy quite good for that. And otherwise, I'm also a fan of satellite films—satellite imagery that can also be animated. There, I can also see what's coming towards me. I see the cloud cover. It's easier to understand than simple pictograms or simpler than the normal weather maps. Those are my main sources. I also like watching Meteor Blue very much. As in "quotation marks," if you don't subscribe to it, as a sort of advanced tourist weather. But they also often have very good forecasts.
Those are actually my main sites. And what else do I watch?
The professional maps. There's a very, very good front map in there from the Dutch
Weather institute. These are all the convergence lines, squall lines, and things like that. Sometimes the Böhm lines are even plotted in there. I think they're very, very good. These are some of the most important things I do. Otherwise, we're just moving from one tiny detail to another.
From your experience, what do most pilots tend to forget most often when checking the weather?
So, the big picture. I often get the feeling that, out of uncertainty and a lack of understanding, people try to take shortcuts and try to basically...
black and white
to prepare. And that means I use an app with pictograms. I just look at it and might forget the altitude wind because my app or my website just tells me what the wind is like at this or that location. It doesn't tell me what the altitude wind is like at that location at 1,000 or 2,000 meters above me. And I think the image for something like that...
weather map, where there's a lot of information, where there's a lot
...where you can actually see the classic weather patterns at a glance; that's often missing from experience. And people often try to take a shortcut that frequently doesn't work.
That means this classic zip code weather or an app where you say, I want to go to this and that launch site, so I'll just type in Neuwied or something, and then it shows me the corresponding data. That might be roughly correct for this specific point, but in the end, you really don't know what's coming in the wider area.
Exactly, and it doesn't tell you what might fall on your head from 1,000 meters above you in the afternoon. And I think there will be many things, we miss a lot of them. And from my experience, I see many people looking at the weather in the morning, and I say, have you actually checked what time the forecast is from? And then you realize that the weather services, which usually don't cost anything, usually only update twice a day, sometimes only once a day. That means the weather forecast is from last night, so it's very old. It's not from tomorrow. And they sometimes have old information if you look too early. So sometimes it's missing. If you look at the timestamp and then, oh, that's this very old forecast.
I wouldn't have thought so. And the newer one sometimes looks different. But sometimes
it's also the case that the fast-calculating models, the ones updated more frequently, aren't necessarily always the better ones for a specific assessment. There are some where you'd say a 12-hour-old ECMWF is often better than something calculated 6 hours ago that's very high-resolution, where you then say that the actual developments aren't captured that well with it.
By the way, I also think the ECMWF model is a very, very, very good model. I'd forgotten that earlier. But it's included in Windy, for example. And I was also very happy that the data is now freely accessible. I've written about that before too.
What do you actually think of offers like Paraglideable, a site that uses artificial intelligence to identify the good cross-country flight conditions?
I actually wrote a new chapter about that, and I have to be careful to differentiate between my work as a flight instructor and the people who specifically want to fly cross-country. So, in principle, I find it a very interesting approach, and I think there's an enormous amount of potential there if they can actually pull it off. For me, there are two things I keep in the back of my mind. Firstly, of course, we have a very different, heterogeneous group of pilots. You just mentioned the cross-country pilots, and I think they are in good hands with Paraglideable, especially when it's ambitious, because Paraglideable says, "I'm looking at the history of the weather conditions and seeing what kind of cross-country flights were made there."
From my point of view, I'm dealing more with hobby pilots and aspiring cross-country pilots—people who aren't saying "every kilometer counts, only kilometers count," but rather people who want to fly beautifully in more moderate, what we call gourmet thermals conditions; they don't want to fly ambitiously, they don't want to make a sport out of it or compare themselves, they just fly for their own enjoyment. For them, I don't think Paraglideable is usable, because who is submitting the flights? Who submits a flight in doubtful, difficult, or perhaps even critical weather conditions that then counts as a flight on Paraglideable and counts as a cross-country flight? Those are people who are very ambitious and want to compare themselves, whereas pilots who don't want to compare themselves might not even fly in such conditions because it's far too turbulent, far too windy.
So you really have to differentiate there. What I would find highly interesting about Paraglideable, if you were to...
I would find it awesome to link this algorithm with the accident statistics or with canopy malfunctions.
Yeah, but then you'd first have to get all the pilots to have a button in their IGC file, or whatever it's called, where you say small collapse, large collapse, and it gets recorded directly. I'm dreaming...
sometimes too.
The 100-meter loss of altitude was caused solely by canopy collapse.
So, tell me, I've been observing Paraglideable for a while now; there are always weeks when I'm out and about, and then I'm somewhere and I'll check what the conditions are like on-site and what Paraglideable would say. And I often experience conditions where, as a normal pilot, say, you shouldn't be flying, but Paraglideable says green, and you actually see one or another person submitting a flight plan. You just have to say, well, who knows what they're doing or what they can do or where they want to go—for them, Paraglideable is certainly helpful. For everyone else, I'd say if Paraglideable says it's not flyable, then that's the final word that counts. So I look at it a bit more nuanced, but I find it a very interesting approach and I'd be happy if it gets even better.
What I find interesting about this tool is less about checking it for, let's say, the current day, but really just as an overview of the development over the next few days. If you see that it stays red all the time, then you know, yeah, it's probably not happening. And if you see five green days in a row coming up and the whole Alps are green or something, then maybe it could be worth thinking about whether I should head to the Alps or something like that. So, really as a decision-making aid for a bit of advance planning. Exactly.
That's how I'd interpret it too. You're basically saying, okay, if it's red, you can be pretty sure you can forget about it. And if it's green, it's definitely worth checking who it's green for. Then some people will say, "Yeah, awesome, we're getting those great days," and others will say, "Yeah, unfortunately, it's only days for the experts." But that's exactly how I'd put it. You definitely shouldn't take it so lightly and just say, "Yeah, today is green, great, let's go flying." Taking shortcuts doesn't work here either.
Among pilots, there's a very well-known saying that always goes: the weather is made on-site. In a way, that's true. You say you should always look at what's actually there. What do you pay attention to when you're looking out the window in the morning or something like that? What are the things you look for to say, "Hmm, how do I assess the day?" and does it roughly match what I've heard about how it's supposed to be?
That depends on which region I'm traveling in. I mean, in the lowlands, you're definitely going to look at different things than in the Alps. Today, as I mentioned, I looked out the window this morning, and I live in Marburg. Marburg is a valley, the Lahn valley. And it's cleared up again; today is exactly that kind of day, and I would definitely want to assess the look of the sky in the Alps or in valley locations. Today, there's fog here in Marburg, and last night was a clear night. And that's a good thing—if there's fog after a clear night in winter, that's how it should be. When there's high-pressure influence, the ground can radiate, the air cools down, and fog forms. If I didn't have fog this morning, especially if I were in an Alpine valley and didn't have fog on a day like this, then I'd have a question mark.
You'd think, "Man, why is the fog gone?" And 70, 80 percent of the time, the Föhn, the Bora, or whatever you want to call the wind, has blown the fog away. So, for example, one thing I always check is, if the weather situation calls for fog, is it actually there or not? Then, whenever I'm on the southern side of the Alps, I'd look at the color of the sky. Is it deep blue, with long visibility? Then the wind is probably coming from the wrong direction, namely from the north, and it's very clear and very low in aerosols. Then I have to expect a North Föhn, Bora, or Mistral. So those are things you can figure out relatively quickly. Then I look at the clouds. Of course, if I have any, how fast are they moving? Above all, I look at those classic thunderstorm indicators, those sheep clouds, if they're in the sky in the morning.
Then I already know, yeah, even though no thunderstorm is forecast, if I see altocumulus clouds in the sky in the morning, I can be almost a hundred percent sure that I can expect a thunderstorm somewhere in the Alps at noon, even if there's nothing in the forecast. Then I'd say what's actually happening right now is probably
more meaningful than what's in the weather report. There are about three key points I'd look at, for example. I'll check, before the first coffee, is there wind somewhere where there shouldn't be? That applies especially again in the Alps, if I shouldn't have wind in the valley in the morning or should still have a mountain breeze. And it's not there. So, I actually always try to imagine a sense of normality for the region I'm in. If you've been somewhere for a few days or a few weeks, you know what's actually normal for wind at a given time of day, for example. That was just in the Alps. If it deviates, whether for the better or for the worse—positive could be that there's less wind than I'd actually expect. But it doesn't have to be positive.
Some kind of weather phenomenon has blocked or changed this wind, after all. So, maybe the wind is about to come from a completely different direction. And in that case, I try to question why it's different now. So, starting from what's normal, what is different?
That's what I do in the morning. Do you do something like that too, or do you have routines where you say, like throughout the day, every half hour I do a plausibility check or something for myself? Like, does that actually run in the back of your mind?
Yes, of course. We look at the cloud development, we look at the valley wind development in the Alps. How is it increasing? Does it all add up? Are the clouds coming in significantly faster? Are they not collapsing anymore, even though they were supposed to? I actually check that all the time. In principle, not just every half hour. That's how it goes. These gears are actually constantly running while I look at the sky and all that. Yes. I don't just stick to my morning thing; I actually check again. Have the clouds become more powerful than I thought? Or have they not? Has the cloud base risen significantly? Has it not? Are the clouds suddenly moving fast? Or are they being blown off the slope? I basically monitor that all the time.
And of course, during the flight as well.
You should actually be able to get that into the students' heads already, so that before every takeoff, they're asked, "What do you see in the sky, or how do you assess it now? Compared to your other flight 20 minutes ago or something, has anything changed?" So that they simply notice, "I have to keep checking, I have to keep checking," and stuff like that.
Exactly. It actually needs to get into their heads. And in the new edition, I've actually tried to...
I've already had that kind of check—like a ten-point check—for when the weather is good. But now I've written down a few weather classics again. When you see these classics or certain very typical sequences, it means that, to a high percentage, you can just process them as pattern recognition without having to develop a deep understanding. And in fact, anyone who spends a day at the launch site and doesn't just engage in small talk will be tired in the evening, even if they didn't fly, because they were actually watching the whole time: can I fly, can I not fly, how is it developing? And even if the decision was that I'm not flying, I'm still tired in the evening because I was occupied with it the whole time.
Your brain had to constantly make decisions about not flying. That's exhausting too.
Exactly, you had to constantly make decisions about not flying. Or, for example, making the decision that now it's okay, the base is high enough, the wind is right, and I can head out on the route. It's exactly like that; in principle, pilots who want to go on a route have to make these decisions constantly. Is it still okay, how has the cloud development changed, can I fly across here or is the base over there too low or is it shaded? So, that has a lot to do with expectations throughout the entire day.
Well, you've been observing the weather for many, many years now. And let's try to look at least a bit into the future. Whether it's the topic of climate change and so on. What have you seen, or what have you personally noticed in these 20 years in terms of real changes where you'd say these are changes that actually affect us pilots?
So, regarding alpine flying, the valley winds have increased. Since I started flying in the Alps about 24 years ago, the valley winds have really increased significantly. For example, I'm a passionate Southern France pilot, and we used to drive to the launch site at five and take off at half past five. Nowadays, we drive to the launch site at six and sometimes take off at seven. So it's quite substantial how much the valley winds have increased. Is that at seven in the evening, just for context? That's in the evening, exactly, for context, exactly. And also in Slovenia, which actually has rather weak wind, the valley winds have also become stronger over the last 20 years. Also in South Tyrol, I've spoken with some pilots in the Alps or with many pilots who are active in the Alps, and they confirm from their areas that the valley winds have increased.
And that is also, of course, a consequence of climate change. We have fewer glaciers, we have more snow-free areas earlier, and that means the alpine heat low develops more strongly, and with that, we get reinforced valley winds. This leads to changed lift-leeward situations, it leads to some routes being harder to fly, or maybe not flyable at all. Because they hit strong valley winds in the leeward. And that might also limit our flight window at some point. At least in certain areas. That is something that is very clear to me.
noticed. That means we'll eventually get conditions like in some places in Spain, where you'd say, you know what, don't even try to launch at noon, you'll just get blown away anyway.
That could happen in certain areas, yes. I wouldn't be surprised. So in certain areas with strong valley winds, that's how it will be. The second thing I've noticed is that we
we're getting increasingly stable weather patterns. By stable, I don't mean atmospherically stable, but long-lasting. So, weather patterns that simply persist for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. And we've seen that more and more over the last few years with the Scandinavia High as well. Where practically the people in the high-pressure area had beautiful weather and drought for ages. These extreme thermals with the Devils, where you also thankfully wrote an article. And on the other side next to it, next to this beautiful weather, of course, there was also long-lasting bad weather, which in some cases caused very heavy rainfall in a row in southern France. A lot of showers and thunderstorms. That was also long-lasting. And these weather patterns seem to be—that also seems to be confirmed by meteorologists, as far as my research went,
that these weather patterns are occurring more often. These so-called meridional weather patterns. The flow patterns no longer change as quickly. They set in and then they stay for longer.
Is that a bad thing or a good thing from a pilot's perspective?
Depending on where you are. If you're in an area with good flying weather, it can be great, of course. Then you have great weather for six weeks. If you're in bad weather, then you're just out of luck. So, if someone is flexible with their holiday planning, it could be good to be able to assess it long-term and plan their vacation accordingly. But specifically, if I take this drought as an example, I'd say it's not that good from a pilot's perspective because it simply leads to very, very, very sporty conditions, especially at the bottom, especially the lowest 100, 200 meters of thermals. And if that persists for weeks, then it's like, you can fly before the thermals in the morning.
or in the evening, when everything has calmed down, but you can't fly in the afternoon or at midday, and you have to cut it short, which is of course annoying from a pilot's perspective.
Have you already adjusted your own style of flying a bit in that regard, or are you flying a glider with a smaller surface area today or something else?
No, I wouldn't say that at all. I actually tend to fly with a mid to high load anyway, and since I'm not the lightest person per se, I'm not really at a disadvantage because the large gliders are always a bit faster anyway.
I have to say that. No, I actually don't. I might do that if I were out on the coast somewhere, but since I actually prefer flying thermals, I think to myself: if there's so much wind that I need a smaller surface area to move forward for thermal flying, then I'd say it's just not a flying day for me, so I'll leave it.
But on average, you'd say climate change isn't making paragliding any easier.
Exactly, I would definitely say that. So you have to rethink a few things. Some areas might gain, for example, I think that due to the valley wind situation, areas with weak valley winds could ultimately count as winners. For example?
Just to be able to put this into perspective a bit? For
Take Slovenia as an example, it could become a winner, because Slovenia still has rather weak valley winds and they aren't as disruptive. And that's why, if you take southern France, the inner Alps, Durance, the Ubaye valley and so on, where very strong valley winds already prevail, they could become losers because then at noon, just like you're in the valley wind, you're simply flying backwards. And that's also true until late August or into September. That's how we could put it. So maybe the
travel destinations might have to change a bit. Or the lunch breaks might get longer.
At the same time, however, it would also mean that we actually need a better understanding of the weather from people again, because they need to be able to better assess or foresee the larger extremes that come with climate change—even the larger extremes within a single day, where you might say it starts off very lightly windy, but it's roaring at noon and then becomes light again in the evening, and things like that. They really need to be able to learn how to judge that much better, or anticipate it, and really say, "Look out, I'm going to land at 11 o'clock, pack up, and I'm definitely not going back up before 5 p.m."
Well, you'd need exactly that bit of understanding for that; you have to get back into it, you have to put in the work and develop that understanding. And yeah, enthusiasm from a flight instructor—that would be my wish.
Well, weather isn't just dangerous and complicated and all that; sometimes it also grants us these really beautiful, magical flights. Let's take a moment at the end to bask in the beautiful sides of the weather—what you can really benefit from it. What have you experienced as particularly outstanding weather phenomena that helped you have those magical flights?
Exactly, you shouldn't badmouth the weather. Even after 24 years, I'm still an enthusiastic paraglider and still a flight instructor because I love being able to introduce people to this awesome sport. And yeah, so a very classic thing, a few years back, was in Annecy in September. September isn't really the strong thermals season anymore, and we were flying nicely in the afternoon; it was already half past seven in the evening and the thermals were slowly switching off, and I think, well, maybe you can fly a bit of ridge lift over the lake, and oh, it's going down so slowly, and then I think, well, we could also slowly head for dinner, and suddenly I see five or six gliders turning under me. Then I think, well, that could still be interesting if some of them start turning under me. You fly over them and then they actually have a beautiful
Bärtchen got all worked up, which actually pulled over 2,000 meters of altitude, up to 3,500 meters. That means it's over 2,000 meters above the start again in Annecy, with a view of Mont Blanc in the evening sun, and ultimately then 3,000 meters of altitude to glide down to the landing field. So I flew over the lake twice, back again, and over it once more, and it was just, it was so magical, dead air, sunset atmosphere, it was a dream. So then you think again, yeah exactly, exactly why we do paragliding.
Was that completely unexpected for you, or was it something where you'd say, no, you can explain that and you can basically...
work towards it, fly towards it, or maybe factor it in and say, look out, this effect can happen again under these and those conditions.
Yes, it was—I'd expect that it was actually a special situation in that case. The thermals were already coming from the side that was in the sun, so if you wanted to expect something, it would have been exactly there. I actually wasn't very far from it either. And that has to do with understanding again, yes, what can you still expect sometimes, even when you think it's already over. Yes, always try to fly that last thermal one more time. It could always happen again. Then, what was another very memorable flight—it wasn't very long, but it was very, very memorable actually on one of the beautiful Canary Islands. There, we actually flew in the shadow of the dam, which was beautifully smoothed over the
pulled across the mountain.
It's called a cloud dam, not from a reservoir, but from the trade wind.
pushing against the... Exactly, trade wind, exactly, it was lifted over the edge on Lanzarote and then became a very smooth laminar flow cloud. And above that, there was actually a lenticular cloud, another laminar flow cloud, and in between, you could fly with the appropriate weather forecast and the appropriate caution regarding how strong the wind actually is, so that you can get a jump out in time. And it was actually, they were dreamlike conditions with about 30 km/h wind and it was such magically smooth air—you don't even get something like that on the coast in Denmark, such clean, low-turbulence air. It's incredible, and then the view out over the Atlantic, I mean, it gave me goosebumps; it's rare and of course you have to enjoy it with caution because a laminar flow cloud forms because there's a correspondingly powerful current there.
You can't necessarily tell how strong the wind is just by looking at the cloud; you have to figure that out. Now...
that's also the wind at altitude, the way you have it. And often on the coast, people say, look out at the sea, and when the waves down there start forming the first whitecaps, then it's slowly getting too strong and you'd better land. Now, as for the increase in wind at altitude, you don't necessarily always see that immediately on the sea itself. That's a great experience, but at the same time, it's always something where you say, okay, I'm hoping now that it doesn't get any worse.
Yeah, although in that case, you wouldn't expect the lift to increase by 50 km/h within 200 meters of altitude. So, in the flight we just did, it wasn't like you could say you'd suddenly be flying backwards quite so unexpectedly. It was more like you could say, okay, we can handle this, and we find out, well, okay, it's flyable, and you dare to go a bit further, and then of course, the better the lift gets, the further away from the terrain you fly, so that you still have enough safety margin ahead. And we were actually able to assess that quite well. That's with the lift, which I already mentioned earlier, it's sometimes different with thermal conditions. There, the lift can sometimes be mixed down suddenly. And those are the situations where the lift then surprises us.
So if it falls on us from above onto the roof. And in this case, out there over the water, it wasn't to be expected that some thermal would suddenly mix the altitude wind—maybe an even stronger altitude wind—downwards. So that wasn't to be expected.
Alright. Now
you can still dream about it.
About weather conditions or special magical weather conditions you've heard of but haven't experienced yourself yet. What would you like to experience with a paraglider, let's say? That kind of flying, I'd love to do that again too.
What would
I'd love to.
more to experience? Phew. I mean, I've actually experienced so much already and had so many beautiful flights.
Just more of that, actually. Just more of those beautiful flights. And I have to say, for me, the beautiful flights were mostly the afternoon ones, I have to say. Even back when I was flying very ambitiously. When I landed and said, "Ah,"
that was nice. But what was actually usually the afternoon flight, when they went really far and really high. So, that you could really enjoy the evening sun and all that. I'd love more of that. But I don't actually have any specific wish right now. Actually, just more of that.
More of those soft, beautiful afternoon conditions.
Although I actually—I'm not exempt from this either—before I get the soft afternoon conditions, I still like to fly some more ambitious thermals for an hour or two at noon. But that's enough for me then. I mean, it wasn't enough in the past, but nowadays it's enough for me. And then I think to myself, yeah, that was fun. But tonight is like the reward I get tonight. That's how I approach flying these days.
Alright Nobby, then I wish you that at least next year, when maybe Corona has dissipated a bit again and all that, that you can go on more flights again and experience exactly those kinds of flight days where you might still fly your ambitious thermals in the afternoon and then have the super soft conditions in the evening, and in the end, you can still chat with your fellow flyers at the landing field about the beautiful weather conditions so that they can learn something from it. That
it's always best to have some fellow flyers to talk shop with in the evening, rather than doing the whole thing alone. It's just nicer to share it with a few people. Definitely.
Nobby, may it be so, thanks for the chat and all the best to you.
Yeah, you too.
Even if we see each other sometime, you know where. In the south, at Baguette and Croissant.
That was Norbert Fleisch, aka Nobby, in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about meteorology for paragliders, I recommend Nobby's book Meteorology. It is currently the most comprehensive work on the subject and includes many great practical examples alongside the theoretical basics. Additionally, I can recommend the Meteo section on my blog Lu-Glidz. You can also find a lot of knowledge about flight weather there. In the show notes for this podcast episode on the blog, I have also put together a series of other links, including those to the weather websites mentioned in the conversation. If you enjoyed this episode, please recommend Podz-Glidz. All previous podcast episodes are available on Lu-Glidz and Soundcloud, as well as well-known audio catalogs like Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, etc.
To make sure you don't miss a new episode, you can also subscribe to Podz-Glidz right now in your podcatcher. And if you aren't already, please consider becoming a supporter of Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz. This helps me present you with many more interesting stories from the cosmos of paragliding. In a way, every episode then becomes your episode too. By the way, the support contribution is completely up to you. If you're unsure how much you want to give, I suggest a non-binding 1€ per podcast episode and 2€ per reading. Even when calculated annually, that's significantly less than what a subscription to a classic paragliding magazine costs. Stay healthy! Ciao!