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Article: Finding the big drops: what we teach about freezing rain is true less than 10 percent of the time. During the other 90, there may be no safe haven above you.
- Article from:
- IFR
- Article date:
- March 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Belvoir Media Group, LLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The tale goes like this.: "If liquid precipitation is falling into a subfreezing layer, there must be a layer above you that is warm enough to melt the frozen precipitation into a liquid form. The best move is to climb."
Sound familiar? If using only this strategy, pilots would be wrong most of the time--and you don't get a second chance on making decisions in freezing rain.
Some SLD Water
Supercooled Large Droplets, or SLD, are undeniably the worst icing hazard to all aircraft. You might be astonished to learn that a droplet greater than 50 microns in diameter is considered "large." To put this in perspective, the average human hair is 100 ...