And then I see, I've got the base altitude right, it really was such a good day—when I see what I wrote and how the flights were, that hunting instinct kicks in, let's just say, I want to know, and I'm waiting for it; now the urge is there, when will the one who starts the first big cross-country flight come, to see if I was right about the day or not, it's fascinating.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast,
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding,
in this episode with Volker Schwanitz and Lucian Haas at the microphone.
Anyone who visits the website of the German Hang Gliding Association, DHV, is immediately presented with a small but fine flight weather forecast, prominently at the top left. In just a few lines, it summarizes what flight conditions to expect in Germany, the Northern Alps, and the Southern Alps. Just one click further, the DHV weather is displayed for the next three to four days, still in a compact form and with the same geographical breakdown. Anyone looking there is hoping for text highlighted in green. Because green is the simple, visual indicator that good thermals are to be expected on such days. The DHV weather is voluntary. It is certainly not the work of a robot that simply translates the results of a weather model into text blocks.
Behind this is a lot of hard work, expertise, and years of experience. Volker Schwanitz is the meteorologist of the DHV. A Gleitschirm-Blog who first got into meteorology as a second hobby through paragliding, but who today can hold his own against any trained meteorologist when it comes to paragliding weather. In this 82nd episode of Podz-Glidz, Volker Schwanitz reports on his work. Among other things, how he proceeds with his daily weather checks and which meteo sites he generally recommends. The 58-year-old also talks about his own beginnings. We talk about the difficulties many pilots face in delving deeper into the complex subject of meteorology and why the scene is always craving "hammer days," even though a day with more relaxed conditions would provide much greater flying pleasure for most.
If you enjoy Podz-Glidz, feel like you're having a good time, and perhaps learn something from the podcast episodes, then please support my work as a patron. You can find out how to do that easily and without any obligation on the website of my blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the "Support" page.
Volker, now that we're recording this podcast, it's just after nine in the morning. Have you finished your meteorological work for the day yet?
Yes, I've done the first pass. So, that's usually with a focus on looking at the current day again to see if anything has changed since the evening forecast, and then briefly checking the following day. Usually, I do the complete run-through during the course of the morning. So, that's typically four or five days, depending on how it makes sense given the weather development and the dynamics of the weather situation, so that you don't get too far into the speculative area. For example, with a large high-pressure area, I'll write further forecasts than if there's a wild low-pressure influence where you know that after three days everything will be turned upside down again.
I was looking at the DRV weather site again earlier. It always says at the top, updated at 8 a.m., next update I think at 6 p.m. or something like that. For an 8 a.m. update, when do you get up? When do you start looking at the weather? And you still have to write some of it down, even if a lot of it, I mean, maybe won't change much from day to day. But still, how much work is still involved in one, if it's just the update from this morning? When do you get started on that?
There's still a lot of work behind it because you can't let anything slip through the cracks. Sometimes it's just small details that change based on the wind. You have to look at it with focus and have a routine so that nothing gets missed. You can't just say, "I'll just glance at the map, it'll take five minutes and that's that." You actually have to go through the entire process for the day to be sure, okay, I've got this under control. Nothing slipped through. So, usually, I'm up around 6 a.m. and I'll browse around a bit. Then from about 6:30, I'm quite focused for an hour or an hour and a half, until about 7:30, and then 8:00 is when...
it's already about the timing.
What does checking a current weather situation look like for you? So, tell me, how do you go about it? What's the rule? What do you pay attention to? Which weather sites do you use, for example, to get that overview of the current weather again? What could a normal pilot learn from that? There
You can definitely learn a lot from this, I'm convinced. Because the super-secret, hyper-advanced sites that are only for the pros aren't the ones I use. It's the combination and the systematic way I scan the individual sites. And let's get straight to the point. I start with the webcam images—Webcam-EU, Northern Alps, Southern Alps. That already tells you a lot. For example, fog conditions: where is the fog, how high is it? Are the first signs of the fog lifting already visible? Or has fog formed now in the autumn, for instance?
winter that maybe wasn't there at all the previous evening? And then you can say, it's already there. Then it most likely won't dissipate during the day either. Same goes for things like cirrus; there's a gradual change in the weather. You often see that, for example from the west—let's take the very typical change from the west, low-pressure influence. Then, looking towards Vorarlberg with a view to the west, you can already see the cirrus, there are already old cumulus, so little sheep clouds in there. Even though there might not have been any tendency for thunderstorms in the previous evening's forecasts. And then you know, oh, it seems like more unstable air has seeped in. With that in the back of your mind, you can also interpret the forecast maps a bit more accurately.
And besides the webcams, the second thing is Windy, for the large-scale weather situation, and I also pull the temperature previews there via the premium version. That way, I can pull data from all three leading weather models and even a few regional models. It's a real explanation, a relief compared to the years when that wasn't accessible yet. You really have to say that. It has also improved the forecast.
Just to go back briefly. I found that really interesting because I think it's something very few people will notice. You said that first, you look at these webcams. It's really about you saying, I'll first see what the real weather is doing before I even look at the model. Because what matters to us in the end is the real weather.
Yes, definitely. It's mainly these transitional situations. The front has passed. Where has it already dried out? These are the kinds of transitional situations that no model really gets exactly right. And there you can simply say, aha, it's clear before Arlberg. But back here by the Zahmen Kaiser or towards Chiemsee, everything is still closed. And the development of the train speed, the loosening on the back side is slowly expected. So, it's still mostly not usable in the east, so to speak. And you can draw many conclusions from that. Also, the road is still wet. In winter, the snowfall limit. Has there been new snow?
Up to where? That also significantly influences the development of the thermals. And in the past, you had to work a lot with satellite images, which were uneven. And that was even more sluggish and uneven,
yes, it was less precise, so more blurry. And that's a great thing. Especially these photo webcams, they're even usable at night. They have such high light sensitivity that even with a bit of moonlight, you can see if there are already cirrus clouds or if the sky is overcast and so on. That's a really great thing. Some even have wind values included. And someone is doing that entirely as a volunteer. That's fantastic.
With these photo webcams, do you look through 20 of them or do you say, like, I have three or four on the North Alpine side and three or four on the South Alpine side, from west to east, where I can just always check, classic weather moves from west to east. So the bad weather usually moves somehow from west to east. Then I can just collapse those four from west to east accordingly and see how something has moved. Yes,
So there are about ten or twelve on the north side that I've saved in my favorites here. I just click on them once, they load up, and then I can click through them relatively quickly. Like you said, it goes from west to east. That's actually the case, especially along the Northern Limestone Alps. I have a few Inner Alpine ones, but the Northern Limestone Alps are usually more productive for the forecast. And for the Southern Limestone Alps, I also have those—that's more the Eastern Alps region, like Bolzano, Kronplatz, Emberger Alm, the typical ones, all the way east to Tolmin in Slovenia and Bassano, of course.
I only check the stuff west of Lake Garda occasionally.
Well, you just mentioned satellite images. You would have found that rather strenuous, that's how it used to be. But nowadays, it's also the case that these Meteosat images—even what you can access directly on Windy, for example—are now available in 5-minute intervals. And I find them surprisingly much higher resolution than what was available before, compared to other things you could access back then. And because of this 5-minute interval at which they are updated, you can also very nicely watch satellite films of, for example, just the last hour, and see very precisely how fast certain cloud bands are actually moving or something like that. Do you use something like that for your assessment too? Or do you say, no, the webcams are actually enough for me?
No, just occasionally. Usually, I'm well-covered by the webcam images and the expectations from the forecast maps. Occasionally, if I see, oh, there are somehow more clouds than expected, or with the high and mid-level clouds—like cirrus and altocumulus—the models often have a harder time with those. And then I'll use the satellite film every now and then. But for a quick overview, the webcams are already a great thing.
So you've checked the webcams, you've seen what the models are saying in relation to that. How do you proceed from there, for example, to say, okay, I need to change the weather forecast I wrote for today and add something special to it?
How do I proceed? After the wind, you usually get—or what is it always called—the raw maps from the meteorological center. So those are the actual surface pressure maps with the geopotential, meaning the ridges and troughs. Then, the 850 hPa maps are important, where I extract the Föhn factor. Especially through these raw maps, I can see how much of the southerly flow is shallow Föhn and how much is high-reaching Föhn. And then I can make the distinction that I always write in the weather text: "inner-alpine Föhn" or "strong Föhn on the main ridge" if this shallow Föhn effect is more pronounced than what would be expected purely from the pressure difference maps.
How can you identify shallow Föhn on an 850 hPa map?
Those are the temperature differences. I look at the European map, specifically the Central European maps. They are already quite high resolution. And then you have the 850 hPa pressure surface, let's say, with isobars, and the temperatures are color-coded. You can see in the Alpine region that with shallow Föhn, on the south side of the Alps—meaning everything south of the Brenner—there is significantly cooler air, and let's pick a number, 5 degrees less than on the north side of the Brenner; that's shallow Föhn. You can already use this 5-degree rule of thumb to say that's when things start to get serious, even if the wind is barely contributing.
Then, based purely on this temperature difference, this southerly flow is so strong that at least in the inner Alps, significant Föhn effects spread out. And the stronger the wind joins in in this situation, the further north it reaches.
That is, in the case of shallow Föhn, it's mainly these cold air masses that move from one side of the Alps to the other through the gaps that exist, like the Brenner Pass and other things—basically the flatter parts of the mountains—where this cold air just washes over.
Exactly, and it moves down primarily as cold air. Because they
well, it's heavier. Exactly.
And it really does do that. But anyone who knows Innsbruck as a foehn hole knows how it blazes there, while in the Northern Alps, conditions are often still flyable.
Okay, so you've also figured out what's happening with this Föhn situation. Then you've got these 850 hectopascal charts. What else is part of your weather check?
Then it continues. There's a whole series of things. I think the 18 stages then come up. The pressure difference diagram, of course, for the Föhn, also as an indication of the development. It's decreasing, it's increasing.
Then, out of old habit, I must say, I still always read through the flight weather report from the control, which in my eyes used to be significantly better. And then there's something that's actually only really come along in the last 2 or 3 years. Meteo-Paraport as a wind forecast—that's a given for me. And I can only recommend to everyone: take this wind forecast, incorporate Meteo-Paraport into your daily flight weather routine. The way they present things, and how they highlight aviation-relevant factors like Föhn or shallow Föhn, is handled brilliantly.
So, it might not be the best model, but the presentation is so outstanding that it's a must. Besides Meteo-Paraport, I also check the Icon D2 wind forecast. And with that, in terms of wind, you basically...
I've also seen the temperature, wind, and altitude wind forecasts beforehand, of course. But with those, you're actually operating at a very high level regarding the wind. And nothing slips through. If I can take a quick step back regarding Meteo-Paraport, since we're on the subject: the tip and the trick, I'll just say it, isn't just clicking on the exact point where I'm flying and zooming like crazy down to the last blade of grass, but looking at it with a bit of distance. You have to pay attention to the large-scale wind distribution, the wind field. Am I on the edge of a strong wind field, or is the next strong wind field far away? That's important information.
And always take two points. For the Northern Limestone Alps, let's say the Tyrol and Kösten-Tegelberg area, I'll take the point at Bad Tölz as a point forecast to make a statement about the Northern Limestone Alps, because it maps out these easterly situations perfectly. If there's an easterly wind there, then bam, 30 km/h shows up on the clock, so that's what's displayed. Then every pilot basically has to know, "Yippee, there's something in the air." And for the same day, if I'm looking at the inner alpine region, just click on the right Föhn line near Innsbruck, then as soon as there's even a little bit of Föhn in the air, the point at Innsbruck starts to rise.
And then, wind speeds of 30, 40, 50 km/h are predicted for Innsbruck and Patscherkurve. And then you know, oops, there's Föhn or Föhn-like conditions, and you can be warned accordingly. And the further east or west you go, the points shift a bit, but in principle, you always take one in front of the Alps and one inner-alpine on a Föhn line; that way, you've actually checked off the main pitfalls very quickly. Also, this pressure wave issue, especially in the Northern Limestone Alps, that's actually handled well within the scope of what's possible.
predicted. And that is already a real expansion of the safety margin.
You just said Meteor-Parapont and also opening it up a bit further. Just in terms of the concept. When you say opening it further, do you mean, okay, I'll just look at these two points you just mentioned, or do you mean I'll also look at it on the map, like that specific map view of Meteor-Parapont? If you use that, do you take the surface wind or do you set a wind in the boundary layer, which is a variable, or do you set a specific height for this wind that is then displayed on those maps? What do you use there?
In this map, in this large-scale display on the right side, it's called wind height - boundary layer, I think. There's one, exactly, upper boundary layer, and then there's height - boundary layer, that's what it's called. One second, I can show you.
I think it's average wind in the boundary layer. Exactly, that
...is in the upper third of the boundary layer. That's what we actually feel as wind in reality when flying. And then you have the large-scale overview on the right with potential high-wind fields—high-wind fields from the east, for example, if the east wind increases from the east. And with those two point representations I just recommended, you have the nuances of the foehn and also wind issues at the Northern Alpine edge under control, and it provides an enormously good overview. I can't praise it enough. Compared to the Icon D2 model, which comes via the XC-Therm branches—which you have to give credit for—the model might not be quite as refined, but the display for the average pilot is so good, you couldn't make it any better.
I'm really impressed by it and I use it myself too. It's part of my daily weather routine.
That means, if you were to say you have a "gut feeling" about the weather, you'd probably place Mithö-Parapont pretty far up on that scale.
Absolutely, that's a given, no question about it. Wind is an enormously important factor in aviation, whether it's the low mountains, the plains, or the Alps.
And that's part of it. There's no mistake there. Those are also many turbulence issues that you can recognize from the wind alone. And with a good wind forecast, you can assess the character of the day accordingly, so to speak.
You've been doing weather observation for very, very many years now. In your experience, by how much has the quality of the weather models—or the weather models as a whole—improved because they've become finer, like the ICON-D2 model with its 2-kilometer grid, where it used to be only 7 kilometers and so on? To what extent have these weather models actually become better from a pilot's perspective? To what extent can you make much more accurate and, for flight safety, safer statements today compared to a few years ago?
So, the forecast quality has improved massively. Also because of the much more extensive options to access models. Many models have been added. The ICON-D2 in the wind, for example. Then MeteoParapont has also developed over time. There were also some detours with the Aeron model. But they have developed so well. And yeah, I'd say, by how much better? You can look much further ahead and make a usable statement. In terms of detail, you always have to say, more than two days, depending on whether the situation is very clear, like a large high-pressure system, or low movement speed in the overall weather dynamics.
You can already get three days quite accurately. But by five days, you're aiming for the broad strokes. With the wind, it's a bit more, a bit less. It would be too much to want to know that level of detail for a five-day range. But you can get the big picture that way. And that's already very valuable. For example, the question was about Hartenstein, the season opening. And there, you could already say, aha, even though the forecast range is quite long, you can say there will be strong easterly winds and some unsettled weather. And that was already enough to make the decision. That's a very current example of how far out you can already make good statements.
With something like that, for example, what do you look out for? Do you mainly look at the large-scale weather situation and say, I'll probably look at various models too and see that they're all saying the same thing? From there, you can assume relatively safely that such an easterly situation will prevail in five days. And they all say, okay, the wind will become relatively strong, for example. Is that the kind of thing you look out for?
Exactly. That's the large-scale weather situation. Again, it's not just about zooming in on Hartenstein itself and thinking I can make a very precise statement with the model within a five-kilometer radius, but the large-scale weather situation—how the highs and lows are distributed around Hartenstein. The main weather models, and I'll say it right now, I use the European model, the global model, the American GFS, and the ICON, the German one. I hardly use regional models because they have a short range, and within that short range, the global models are barely any worse. And that makes things a bit easier for me. So, with these three models, if they're running roughly the same, then you can say, yay, that's a reliable forecast.
In the past, people used other maps, like standard deviation maps and these spaghetti plots. That's actually become obsolete by now. In the current case of Hartenstein, the situation has come as an additional help for me—it's called a High Over Low, so a high in the north with a strong low underneath it. That's a very stable situation. It's not moving away. So I could say that it's going to stay like that, and the wind will remain correspondingly strong.
That means with that kind of knowledge, of course, if you say, "I'm planning a flying holiday or something," you could also relatively—well, a somewhat short-term flying holiday, if you say you'd like to go away in a week—you could at least say with that knowledge which region you should definitely rule out because the weather will probably be worse there. And then I can focus on the region where, theoretically or according to the meteorological models, the calmer, safer weather is, whether I'll actually be able to fly well or not. Well, thermally good, that's perhaps still up in the air. You might only be able to say that for sure two days in advance. But after that, at least you can make a selection and say, "I'm at least ruling out the corners where it's pretty much certain that flying won't be possible."
Yes, in any case. That works quite well in this, let's say, five to increasingly roughly six-day range. If large, slow-moving pressure systems have established themselves, you can even forecast a day or two longer. But it works very well. And actually, the thermal quality is—I don't want to say "predictable"—but the pressure systems contain the air masses. And there, you can actually estimate the thermal quality quite well. I don't want to go as far as filtering out the "hammer days" right now. But you can already say whether it's going to be low-based soup or at least mediocre to slightly good, so that you as a normal pilot can have a lot of fun.
That works well.
When you're making an assessment like that, even if you're looking a few days ahead, do you also check weather sites like Paraglideable as an AI-supported thing, just for a rough estimate? Or do you say, as a weather guru, I absolutely don't need something like that anymore? I have more AI in me than I'd let some computer calculate for me.
I look at it because I keep getting questions about it, and it's at least something people can use. But it's such a "sour grapes" situation. It's a help for people who don't want to dive particularly deep into the details. I wouldn't say it works quite badly in some parts. But there are decisions I want to make, and I don't want to have them dictated to me by a red or green cheek without knowing how they were reached.
Without knowing how they came about. You know how they came about. But now let's jump back a bit, basically to the beginnings of your meteo career. How did you even get interested in meteo in the first place?
Yeah, also as a personal interest as a pilot. I started flying in 1990, and back then the internet was still in its infancy. We worked with those trickle-down dial-up modems. And not to mention, you had a few maps that you could gradually rely on. And it only became more after that. And the purpose was simply, just like now, to be able to fly more purposefully. Those were of course much smaller possibilities than what they are today. But the initial spark was simply personal interest. I want to rule out the bad days. I want to know roughly what the good ones are like. Maybe even a bit of a regional thing. Is it worth going to the Alps?
Yes, that was actually the main reason, to be honest. I'm, if I'm being completely honest, also a bit of a wimp when it comes to wind. And whenever there were strong winds, I always tried to stay well away from them. And that was also a main reason, I have to be honest.
Back in the 90s, there were things like fax weather reports from the DWD. You could call a number and then you'd get about eight pages of fax. If you had a fax machine at home or something. Did you use something like that too?
Yes, but extensively. But by the meter. Fax polling, retrieving from DVD. Yes, yes, yes, everything. I used everything that was available. And if I may say so, there's probably also some flight weather service for real motor glider pilots that you can call. I didn't have much of an idea back then at first. And then at some point I thought, today is a high-pressure area. They probably have nothing to do tonight. Then I annoyed them with questions at night. I said, I'm a paraglider pilot. If I'm bothering you now, kick me out. But they were always very friendly. And enormously helpful. And I think I got on their nerves quite a bit. But it helped.
Where would you say this persistence, this desire for knowledge, comes from, especially regarding weather questions? I know many pilots who just want to go flying. They basically have to take the weather as it comes. And if the weather is bad, they say it's not happening. And if the weather is good, they say, "Alright, I'm going flying." They say, "Okay, the sun is shining and the wind seems somewhat right." But not many pilots actually want to deal with it that intensively. That's the impression I get. Maybe it's just too exhausting for them or something. What was the trigger for you that made you say, "Hey, I'm really going to dive into this"?
You have to be clear: as long as you notice you're making progress, that it's getting better, and that it helps you with paragliding, you stick with it. It is, of course, a real time-sink. Let's be honest. You have to read mountains of stuff just to get a few drops of information. Paragliding—yes, it takes a real amount of time to get weather-ready information. And then, with the rise of the internet, a lot of forum activity developed with experts. There were many people from the German Meteorological Service who contributed. And there were great weather discussions and analyses of weather situations. Kachelmann was also involved and joined in.
Was that a weather center forum? That was the forum of the
Wetterzentrale. Okay. And it was enormously educational, I have to say. And I once titled it "the internet without trolls and without fake news." So, really people who are interested in sharing something, in moving things forward. And looking back at that time now, it could honestly bring tears to your eyes. Yes,
Is the Wetterzentrale forum all trolls now? I haven't been on there in a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And in this truly, I'd say, enriching forum discussion, Jörg Kachelmann then invited the Wetterzentrale forum to a workshop in—that was in August 2000—in his Wetterstudio Alpen. And we were there with, I think, 25 people, and he really took the time for a whole weekend. We could use everything there, do everything for the SWR at that time. We worked out a weather report back then that was actually broadcast, where at the end he said, "Today we have some rookie meteorologists as our guests who helped out, and they're going to perform a little song for you." And then we sang, just very briefly in the credits.
And I remember, laughing, laughing, laughing, "Summer is coming over the country." But that was just on the side. It was incredibly educational, and you could see, oh, they're just cooking with water too. They just do it in a more structured way. And I watched that, and then over the years—and they're all years, they were rebuilt, so for me, reworked and processed in that manner. But that was a huge boost I got from that forum meeting and also from Kachelmann. It was great.
A. Back then, in the early 2000s—or not just early, but later on too—there was still the gliding sail weather service by Stefan Hörmann. B. Exactly.
Exactly. So in 2000, Stefan Hörmann—many people will probably still know him—had set up a paraglider weather service and, I have to say, was way ahead of his time back then. It was a real phenomenon, you have to say. And in 2000, he was at the Kachelmann meeting and had just started flying paragliders. I already had ten years under my belt, and he had this intention: I want to experience weather live, because he came from that storm hunter and thunderstorm chaser and extreme wind event background. That had really gripped him, and now he wanted to experience weather live and, on a small scale, just hang out in the weather with the paraglider.
And yes, that's how the whole thing developed. A very good friendship actually developed there, and then, in his prime, he became self-employed as a weather service provider. Like I said, he was way ahead of his time back then. And when it ended tragically, it was a really terrible gap, especially for the cross-country pilots, which the DAV then tried to pick up a bit. By me writing the weather text for DAV-Wetter, but it's not as detailed as what Stefan did back then. That has to be made clear as well.
Did you never have the intention or interest, I mean, as sad as it was how things ended with Stefan, to say, okay, there's this gap now. I actually have this knowledge, what you're doing for the DAV now, but could I maybe basically take over what Stefan offered? Like, you're doing glider weather 2.0 or sunshine weather, or whatever you could have called it.
Actually, no. Because the work Stefan did, you guys didn't even see it—the average pilot didn't see it at all. The amount of effort it takes to do that one side with all the assessments and the gradients for the different flight regions of the Alps, all of that has to be worked out first. Then it has to be put into a format. And on top of that, he had a phone service and was talking to people. And he also gave people some pretty strange advice. When I'm sitting on the weather, I have to really concentrate. And if the phone cuts in, that thought is gone instantly and I have to re-focus. And also this idea with the phone weather. Look, if you have a pilot on the line who wants to know something, then ten minutes of conversation are gone in a heartbeat.
And in an ideal case, you can handle six people in an hour. That's not a high volume. So, the work Stefan took on, what he accomplished—I have to say, I wouldn't have been able to do that. No, it was inhumane, you have to say. Unbelievable.
As far as I know, Stefan also suffered from time to time from people insulting him between jobs when things didn't turn out the way he had experienced them. Are those things you get too? Do you also notice people complaining to you and saying, "Hey, you wrote it was this and that, and it wasn't like that at all," right?
Yeah, they really let off some steam. I mean, you have to say, nowadays, yeah, it's honestly insane. In the past, if I got something wrong and should have known better, it did annoy me. I have to say that. If I wrote something stupid, like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it really sticks in my head. But if I know, yeah, they just need to let off some steam. Let me give you an example. There was someone who, in my weather forecast, I wrote "no precipitation after the south foehn." And then a bitter, angry email came in: "You don't mean to tell me that I can't fly to Adelsburg next weekend during my vacation?"
Exactly. No, I don't take that kind of stuff. So, if I'm wrong and I should have known, or I've misjudged something, I do get annoyed, but it's at myself. Otherwise, if someone says, "Look, it was actually this and that," then I have to accept that. And if necessary, I also have to admit that I was wrong.
When Stefan's soaring weather reports came to an end, in a tragic way, was that gap there? You then said, yes, then the DRV came along. Did they approach you, or did you offer it to the DRV? How did it come about that you now do the weather for the DRV on the homepage as a freelancer, but very regularly?
So I was already working for the DRV, as I said, as a freelancer with many articles, lectures, and also the setup of the weather page without the weather text or any significant weather text. And then with the end of the gliding weather, as I said, there was suddenly a huge gap. He had covered something that no one else could cover, such precise thermals and forecasts for regional cross-country pilots.
Then it had to happen pretty quickly, and the DRV actually approached me. And we did a few trials. What can be written? What needs to be doable within what timeframe? And I do this seven days a week. So, there's no "weekends and Sundays" or "on vacation"—when the guys I fly with are still lying in bed, I'm already on my laptop. And in the evening, when they're showering and getting dinner ready, I'm still at it. Well, even within that framework, it's not just pulled out of thin air.
When you do this constantly, there's a lot of routine involved. What is still exciting about the weather for you today? I mean, what grabs your attention these days where you go, "Wow, that's interesting." And where you really let that meteor nerd inside you come out again, and you're sitting there in the morning thinking, "Ah, now I know why I do this."
Actually, evaluating the cross-country flights in the evening, or sometimes even in the afternoon, is already part of it. And then I see, did I get the base altitude right? Was it really such a good day? When did the thermals definitely move through? I mean, when could the cross-country pilots take off? Or did it shift far back? Or when did the cirrus clouds arrive early and end the day sooner? So when I see that, what did I write? And how were the flights? That's like the hunting instinct, I'd say. I want to know. I'm waiting for it, now I want to go. When does the one who sets off the first big cross-country flight come, to see if I got it right with the days? With that day or not? It's fascinating.
That means on such good cross-country flight days, you really do a good follow-up for yourself. You really look at individual flights and check the altitude profile to see how high they got and other things like that.
Exactly. And when did the thermals kick in? For example, and what's incredibly helpful, if the comment also says something like "had so much headwind" or "morning headwind" during the day. Something like that. I like to note that down and I can actually do something with it.
So, do you document that for yourself in any way? Like, just in your head, or do you also write it down and say, okay, that was my text forecast? I assume you probably archive all your text forecasts over the years.
Yes, I can take a screenshot with the push of a button via Dropbox. I save it in that form. And yeah, I used to also save the maps in specific locations. Especially for the Dolomites in the autumn, because many of the models, the thermals apps, still fail there. But I don't need that anymore. I can manage that now.
Do you also sometimes check the live tracking during the day on those great days? You can often see, for example, if you look at live tracking on Burner, that in one corner there are currently 20 paragliders visible, and you'd say it's probably going pretty well back there, while in other corners you see much less or something like that. It is also a way to get a relatively good indication of where it's going well right now. Which corners are being flown a lot? Where is it perhaps being flown far, if you display the corresponding tracks? Do you already use something like that? Or is the day really occupied with something else and you only say, okay, now I'm really going to do the daily review analysis in the evening?
Usually, I don't look at it. Every now and then I do, especially if I know that acquaintances of mine are flying in some corner and running this live tracking. That happens, but actually, once a day is over, I'm also happy to get away from the computer. I just have to say that. And in the evening, I see everything I want to know, and then it's back to the weather. In between, there has to be time for something else too.
With your extensive knowledge of weather, how has that influenced your own weather skills and your own flying?
Yes, it has become more goal-oriented and relaxed. I mean, over the years, you have to say, the demands I have for my own flights are more along the lines of, I want to have a nice flight, a nice flight day. And whether it's 500 meters more or less base altitude is no longer decisive. And cross-country flight has never been my thing anyway. I did a cross-country flight once and wanted to fly 100 kilometers in Pinzgau. And honestly, after three hours, I was so bored. And then I flew to Hollerbach, did a stopover there first, and said, whatever, back and forth, it's not my thing.
And yes, as I said, I can filter out the bad days very well and then don't go flying. Or I might postpone the flights until very late, afternoon or evening, just to do a small one. But overall, that feeling of well-being is, I'd say, something I've earned for myself. That feeling of well-being, I can't put it any other way. So I try, and I don't have to force myself through anything or fight through anything anymore. I have my idea of it, and if it suits me, I go flying. And in this bubble of well-being, I fly a nice flight within my own framework, and I think that's great.
Would you say that because of your knowledge of the weather—which also gives you a lot of insight into what's wrong or right, and what risks are associated with certain weather conditions and so on—it has probably become increasingly clear over time what leads to what? Have you basically become more cautious over the years? Also because of that, you say you're mainly looking for this "comfort zone" now?
Yes, and specifically in the selection of flight areas. When am I where and why? I mean, the absolute prime spots.
For example, it turned out with that group I'm always out with, with the buddies, that we're happiest when we're in Bassano during the first half of September. It's not the top spot, but for us, it is. It's warm, you usually don't have problems with thunderstorms anymore, in Bassano you usually don't have problems with North Föhn, you usually don't have problems with Bora East winds like in Slovenia. You can fly in shorts. Actually, everything—all the weather influences that can be bothersome—are minimized at this time, specifically during this late summer, calm late summer period.
And for over six, seven, eight years now, we've had a flight output there that is phenomenal. Of course, no record flights, but for us, it's what we want.
And it's also because of all these emails, XC databases, and cross-country flying, where people always say that's what matters. Do you think a lot of people focus too much on those supposedly great, thermically amazing flight conditions and pay way too little attention to what I actually want? I just want to fly comfortably. Where can I actually find the comfortable weather?
Absolutely, absolutely. So things go on in the heads of the pilots, the inexperienced ones. But you're fired up. The inexperienced pilot is burning with those who are simply wrong and maybe even becoming dangerous, heading towards dangerous. Let me give an example. A well-known pilot doesn't fly anymore. More of a cautious one, with a high need for safety, she didn't want any turbulence. So she wanted thermals. But she goes on her vacation, her annual vacation in May at the Emberger Alm.
Yeah, exactly. And of course, it's going to be turbulent, that's clear. But you have to know that. But she wasn't convinced to move it somehow or look for another area where it's just much more relaxed, calmer, let's say in the Northern Alps. There, in the afternoon, you can very easily choose how strong it should be. And then I don't know, it sounds weird. It's magical air, stuff like that. But she gave up on it anyway because she wasn't happy with it.
That has a lot to do with the fact that pilots actually don't deal with the background of meteorology enough.
And like we mentioned earlier, they might sometimes not be willing to invest that much time into learning the basics to understand it. Why is that? Even though meteorology is actually the point that decides so much about safety, but also an enormous amount about the fun we have when flying, in the end. Exactly something like saying, finding conditions that are fun for you and not ones that make you anxious and because of that you might stop, while others might still be flying great, but you have to say to yourself, these aren't weather conditions for me. But I can only recognize that for myself if I roughly know it, if I can read it from such weather forecasts or something like that. These are my conditions, which I can handle well.
Yeah, the problem in my view is that people aren't aware that the material from the training is only presented in very broad strokes and is incredibly schematic. So, trying to derive the actual day-to-day flight conditions in a specific area from that... I'd just say, it works almost not at all. And then they notice that it doesn't work. That's rubbish, it's not helping me. And then the frustration kicks in and the comments come quickly. Everything is always different here anyway. Why should I even bother with it?
And it's simply that they lack a bit of the persistence to keep educating themselves, to do the groundwork, until they reach the point where they can make a usable assessment for themselves.
But isn't that also perhaps a bit of a flaw in the training, that the pilots aren't guided a bit more towards that, and it's not just shown to them that this is a great thermal condition, but also really saying, I'm going to show you now what to look out for to get such good weather, pleasant thermal soaring. Those are the conditions you should actually be looking for. And it's not just saying, yeah, in the training they say it's thermally strong at noon, so you as A-license pilots shouldn't fly now. From 5 p.m. you can go out again, and stuff like that. But once they have their A-license, they're released with it and then they stand there and don't really know all that. So how could one improve the meteorology training in practice, especially for these beginners, average pilots, ordinary joes, who might not have the amazing education but need the amazing conditions, so that they actually have the necessary knowledge to deal with it?
That's a difficult question, to be honest. Because think back to your own A-license—the amount of information that was crammed into your head. From aviation law to aerodynamics, then pre-flight rules, everything was new. And then you still have to learn all the stuff like taking off, landing, altitude assessment. What was that? Or is that often a drama for the A-license students? And if you then want to add deep meteorology on top of that, where we really have to work with temperature analyses and analyze air masses—we would ruthlessly overwhelm them.
It would be great if this were brought more to your attention. You have your A-license now, but be very, very careful. Be aware. Even a normally strong thermal, which is no problem for normally good pilots, can take you down at the beginning. And you really have to make that conscious. It's a very difficult thing because there are always people who handle it perfectly. They might be "intuition pilots" who can just do it. They have a rough weather framework, and they can handle everything that happens within that framework. And they don't have to analyze super complex thermals at all.
But that's more of the exception.
I don't have a royal road for that either. So I can only guess, but don't rely on that. Be aware that it takes a long time. And on the way there, be careful with the selection of the days.
In a preliminary talk, you told me once that you're currently working on—I think you just received—the Meteor questions for the DHV exam. They also asked you what could perhaps be revised? What should be updated or something like that? Are there really Meteor topics where you'd say, "these are coming, they're important," but they don't appear in the DHV exam at all so far?
There aren't just a few. It always depends on what the goal is. As I just said, the Arschhain people are really being hit from all sides. They're being bombarded with information that is also important.
And Meteo is, well, that's a world of its own. It's like, let me put it this way, learning another language. It's useless. I can recite the ABCs by heart, but I still can't understand complicated texts or tell a joke in a foreign language.
Are there things, since you're revising it now, where you're saying, "We definitely need something new here"? I don't know if you've looked into it by now. Are there parts where you're saying, "Something new has to go in there for sure"?
Yeah, it was actually in the last one—that's a working group—the question was, what can be removed? And there are a few, not just in the meteorology section, but a few trick questions that nobody needs. I don't have any in mind right now. So, questions that are just useless, that only cause confusion. Quite a lot was cut, and for a few things that were cut, I said, for the meteorology part, let's leave them in. For example, the air mass description, moist, dry. Because that always shows up in the flight weather report and it does provide information. A dry, cool air mass from the northwest or from the northeast—that already says something about the flight weather.
And if I were to leave out this air mass description, information would be lost. So I said, for example, let's just leave that in. I think it's actually worth mentioning.
What I've always noticed about these basic meteorology training modules is that I think a lot of it still comes from tradition, or from where it originated—it's still viewed through the lens of classical aviation meteorology. So, the big aircraft that move across large areas. They talk about thermal release. But this thermal release actually comes from tradition, from glider pilots who say, "I'm going to let myself be pulled up to 600 meters, and by then the thermals have to reach that height accordingly." But for me as a paraglider pilot, I might have thermals that only reach 300 meters, but I can still use them. Yet the classical aviation weather report will say thermal release is still a long way off, but I'm already flying in those thermals and so on.
Especially these small-scale processes and what happens on the slope and so on—the things that, basically, only we paragliders and hang gliders experience, whereas a glider pilot won't experience many of these processes at all, and motorized aircraft even less. They have no imagination for it, and the meteorologists—the general aviation meteorologists—don't deal with it either, unless they also fly paragliders. Wouldn't it be important to include more of these topics in the training? Like small-scale turbulence, what kind of flow phenomena occur on certain terrains, or things like—sure, it's called a hazard, but to be able to recognize it even better, for example, what conditions lead to dust devil developments and so on.
Where a glider flying high might not care at all if a small thrombus forms down below, for us as paraglider pilots who are currently on final approach and get washed through it at 20 meters high, that's absolutely no fun. And that you could recognize much more of the small-scale stuff during training—how it's all connected, how something like that can form, and then also provide the cues: what are the visible signs of it, what should I be looking out for there?
That would also be an important thing, or rather, it is an important thing. The problem is, all this flight meteorology comes from the glider's flight area. That flight area was basically adopted and then gradually adjusted a bit, and many of the small-scale things—for example, dust devils—are, to my knowledge, already quite extensively discussed in the A-license, they're already included. But if you wanted to write all of that down, well, you'd end up with a tome, maybe 5,000 pages, that nobody would read through. So one way, and there's certainly one at many flight schools, is to really go into detail about the local peculiarities and the climatic background in the specific area where you fly and train.
Specifically at Emberger Alm, many A-licenses are issued by German schools, where they actually say, "Look, we're flying here for your A-license, it's May, but if you're in a glider, watch out for days when it really goes crazy, and keep an eye on the valley wind, where the lee might be, how the area develops with a southerly wind—even at Emberger, there are some föhn effects." Those are the specific quirks and small details that are best conveyed to people through the area briefing, I'd say.
I don't think you can achieve that across the entire Alps all at once. But bit by bit, for the specific areas—and I'd say, build up experience in the areas where you fly first. Don't just run from one hotspot to another; take the time to understand the areas, and then move on. That's basically my thought on the subject.
Well, you've been observing the weather so intensely for many years now. What kind of changes have you noticed yourself? Has the weather character—the flight weather character—really changed for us over these 20, 30 years that you've been doing this?
You have to say, we're talking about the climate here. And 20 or 30 years is peanuts for the climate. It's only just starting. That's how you can try to read a bit of a trend.
But has something changed? Well, felt-wise, I have to say, especially those years from 1990 to 2010 were enormously favorable for flying. Or maybe even until 2015. Many very warm, high-pressure years. But I'm just going by gut feeling here, where in the lowlands and the highlands here with the southern positions, many areas were great for flying. And after that, there was a bit of a shift, where we had long northern and northeastern positions that we specifically couldn't use much here on-site. And that actually stayed at a rather low level with the mixed positions, I'd say.
I don't want to label this as a climate trend per se. Rather, one has to be aware that climate is always just the calculated average of normal weather fluctuations. And that includes century-defining summers. And it also includes century-defining floods. You can't say that if the climate weren't changing, we'd all be experiencing pure bliss with an average temperature of 17.5 degrees day and night. The fluctuations are always there. And these average temperatures are just calculated values from those fluctuations. You really have to give the climate a lot of room before making a statement.
That it's getting warmer is a clear fact. You can see that. It's also visible in these long-term climate oscillations if you look back over the last 2,000 years. We are in a warm phase. And then you have to believe the scientists, plus the effect that humans have on top of that. And then you also have to ask, what else is causing it?
Temperature and average temperatures are one thing. Climate change also means that certain weather patterns change. But it can also mean that certain things can intensify during specific seasons. Because there might be stronger or weaker temperature differences between large areas, which then lead to repeated wind intensification or wind weakening, and so on. Are there things where you feel—because maybe you can't prove it absolutely yet, but where you could say, intuitively, it's more like I see high-wind events increasing, or fundamentally that the valley winds in the Alps have actually become stronger on average over the years, or something like that? So, with the climate change that many people can already feel is happening, has the flight risk from a weather perspective already increased for us?
Phew.
So I can't confirm that, let's put it that way. I don't want to rule it out, but if you think about it, even if the temperature rises by 2 degrees, who is sensitive enough to actually be able to feel that and say, "Yeah, I notice it's gotten warmer now" without looking at the raw figures and the archives, without going back to the data archives? It's the same with the wind. You actually have to look at a time series and the extreme values to make a statement. Right now, I can't say that based on feeling. I don't feel like the valley wind is 3 to 4 kilometers per hour stronger now.
I can't say that. You really have to make statements based on long periods of time. And that includes more than just a "century summer," a "century flood," or a "century storm" in order to at least be able to draw some lines or make a statement about a trend. So, I can't rule it out as a general rule, but intuitively, I haven't been able to feel it.
I experience this again and again, even when I'm in the Alps—maybe even more strongly there than here—where people tell me, people who have lived on the southern side of the Alps their whole lives for example, that summers like the last ones, where there were so many thunderstorm systems for weeks on end, that didn't happen in the past, nothing like that. But are those things where you'd say maybe your perception of the past is a bit compressed? And maybe you don't remember the corresponding stormy summer from 20 years ago either, and now it was just another stormy summer? Or is it really to the point where you can say it's getting warmer, the air can also hold more moisture? It's absorbing more moisture, looking at the big picture—all the climate researchers say that too, they say, okay, it's getting wetter, there will be more heavy rainfall events, there can be more thunderstorms and stuff like that.
And is this what we're seeing right now? Or is it just the perceived exaggeration of a bad summer or something like that?
So, to get to the point, it's more of a feeling. And you have to say, if you're a pilot, a summer that's really bad for flying—with lots of thunderstorms or other nuisances—it actually hurts physically, let's be honest. In the past, you'd go, "Okay, fine, we just won't go to the outdoor pool." But now, oh, that really gets to you. And if your vacation is rainy too, that really sticks in your brain. But you really have to look at the long term and things like that. There are also just really nasty summers, real "infected" weather patterns, that just keep regenerating over and over again.
And then we have a summer of constant humid thunderstorm air and nothing but southwesterly conditions. But that's all still within the realm of what's normally possible. To be able to say that things are heading in a specific direction, you have to observe many, many years of data and then evaluate it. But intuitively—and not just intuitively—I can almost always say that it's just the pilot's head, specifically the "pain test," that kicks in. Or of course, in the other case, when there's a super-duper "summer of the century" and for those who could make use of it from a flying skill perspective, for them, it's about reaching those heights at the old camp—at the old camp, we fly 3,000 meters high.
Well, yeah. Maybe once every 20 years you get a summer where you reach those heights for many days. But for those who have it burned into their brains, in the old area, we fly 3,000 meters high.
Maybe there's also a bit of, well, for these frustrating experiences at least, there's a bit of the curse of XC databases, because if you're constantly looking at them every day and asking, "Where was it flown?" You see that it was flown somewhere. And then you're sitting in the area where you say, "Yeah, but the weather was crap here and the others always get lucky, and for me, it's crap weather," so that the bad weather situation basically gets magnified in your head and your own "pilot immune system" starts acting up, so to speak. It attributes everything even more strongly to the weather than it actually is.
In any case. Because by seeing immediately in the evening where the day was most ideally usable, it naturally shifts what people consider—for us, it was, to put it bluntly in German, shit—maybe only two hours of flying with maybe only 300 meters of altitude gain. In the past, that was a great thing. Nowadays, oh, if they flew 100 or 150 kilometers down there, oh, what a mess, and we were stuck here in the shit. So the whole idea of what's good and what's bad shifts enormously. You can already see that, and it doesn't make most pilots any happier.
Which weather topic or phenomenon is actually still the most exciting for you today?
Actually, for me personally, it's the development in the long-range forecast. How does the frontal zone position itself? How do the weather systems shift? All that stuff that's just above the serious weather limit and kind of "rumbling" around. What does the stratosphere do in all that? Or there's that polar vortex split, which bends the flow in the upper atmosphere and then probably, or more often, leads to certain weather anomalies in the surface pressure area. Just rumbling along like that. That's what I... that's what I enjoy the most. It's exciting. It doesn't always have a super targeted outcome, but I enjoy it.
When was the last time you were personally surprised by the weather while in the air? Both in a positive and a negative way?
Also quite often in a positive way too, that it just went faster, higher, or that the thermals were simply more usable. Which, of course, always has a bit to do with your own form for the day. I mean, there are days when you can handle more turbulence than on others. But truly surprised. Well, that was many years ago. So I avoid it and, even if I've stepped into a trap once, I'm very attentive to make sure it doesn't happen again. One flight stands out in my memory. That was also in 2010 at the Emberger. There were no thunderstorms forecast.
Actually a good day for a cross-country flight. But some unstable air leaked in from the south, which triggered heavy thunderstorm activity towards Lienz, even quite early in the afternoon. And we climbed up, and all I had in my head was the forecast: it's good today, there are no thunderstorms. You just potter around, getting ready. And then I took off rather late, turned right, and saw everything pitch black. People! And that was just such a mess. What's going on there? And then it was a real alarm. I had to say my goodbyes and head down very, very quickly. But those are things I hadn't kept in mind. I was surprised.
Nothing happened, but it still annoyed me. You really should have double-checked right, left, up, and down before starting, just to make sure of what the situation was like within your field of vision.
Especially when you say look right, left. When you drive to a launch site, do you also sometimes use an app like Windy on your smartphone and say, I'll check here again before I start, just once more, like a satellite image or a rain radar or something else. Or check the wind station again, which you can also display in the area. Just checking it once before the launch, is there anything unusual about that? Do you do something like that? Like a launch site routine, a quick weather check again?
So, rather rarely. But with wind speeds, I do check it every now and then. I look at the reference points like Sonnenblick. Now, we'll stay with the Emberger or also within the Dolomites. There's a station up at Selajoch, or Rittnerhorn is also an important one for the Dolomites. And of course, the northern Alpine edge, Patscherkovel, if there's Föhn in the air, Föhn currents. I'll check those again while sitting on the mountain. I don't really look at the rest. I've basically got the rest under control, let's say, that I can assess what I'm seeing. But I have to say, I've also been wrong. And if I can give one more tip, it's that people really should read the flight weather report and, within that framework, interpret the clouds they see—specifically the clouds.
That means if the clouds are there and increasing high pressure is expected, a thick buildup in the distance bothers me much less than if the high-pressure influence is decreasing and unstable air is coming from the southwest. If the situation moves in that direction, I interpret the exact same cloud completely differently, with a higher potential for danger, or I'll head down earlier than in a situation where it's said things are stabilizing or dry air is moving in.
But that also means that as a pilot, if I can't read it all myself from these maps, it might also be useful to read a text forecast that simply includes a basic description of the weather development.
Yes, definitely. If you're not really proficient with the maps, a text forecast should always be included. So, I have this from the last DRV meeting, which is also available as a video on the DRV weather homepage.
I'll also link that again in my show notes.
And I can give tips for good text weather there. And good text weather, if it's somehow tangible—meaning, in a language you understand—always has to be part of it, because there's stuff to read out that quickly gets overlooked in the maps or that someone who isn't really experienced might miss. It always has to be part of it, it's quickly brushed aside, it always has to be part of it.
Volker, last question.
What was perhaps your most beautiful weather-related experience you've ever had while flying?
I can just, I can just spit that out right now. Recognizing that period I described earlier in Bassano, where everything works exactly how I want it to, and not just once in a while, but with a regularity that is just dreamy. It's just, then everything is good. You can, yeah, that's—we also had to work on that. We were there at the end of September, beginning of October, and there was always a lot of Bassano smog and air above it. And then you noticed, the more we move towards summer, I mean, the more we move towards September, the warmer it is and accordingly fewer smog conditions. Ah, that's good. And yeah, then we, until we got the time right, that period from beginning to mid-September, that is blessed for me, that's great.
So, as a tip, if someone wants to meet you, they just have to book two weeks of vacation in Bassano in early September; then they'll be able to find you somewhere at the launch site, or in the Antica Abbazia, or somewhere else, and also get a direct weather tip from you. Yeah,
In any case, in any case.
Volker, thank you for your great stories about me. I also thank you for your video. I think you're doing a really great job with what you always provide regarding DAV weather, but also the other weather knowledge that you continue to share in the corresponding DAV info texts and everything else. So, on behalf of all the pilots, I just want to say thank you. I'll take that off my plate now, talking like that. And I hope you keep doing this for a long time, because it's certainly a very, very helpful resource for many people.
Yeah, well, I actually enjoy it. I plan to keep doing it. And if I may quote Karelmann, who told me back at the weather center meeting that in meteorology, age is an advantage because you've gathered experience, and you can't just study experience. And I can only emphasize that because over the years, these are things that have developed over time; they need time. And yeah, accordingly, I'm still having fun with it and hope to be able to work on it for a long time to come.
Well, then you'll stay with us as an elder statesman or an elder meteor man. Volker, I thank you and I wish you a good time. Yes,
You too, Luciano. And a huge shout-out for your blog as well. Ciao.
Bye.
Hi.