A weather hiccup for the race

As noted yesterday the ladies are in kind of a waiting game right now because the weather over Nebraska is overcast and mostly IFR conditions. That would not be a problem if there was a reasonable expectation of a window of opportunity to get the planes out of Beatrice, but after about 20 hours of waiting it looks like that window is shrinking.

Yesterday at least 5 planes tried to make it to Minnesota against a building wall cloud to the West and all but one landed at off-field locations effectively ending their race. The one that landed at the official timing airport had to file an IFR flight plan to get down thereby ending their race as well. So 90% of the race teams are stuck in Nebraska with nowhere to go to avoid weather.

The plan that appears to be in process is that the racers will split up into IFR pilots so that ALL the planes can move safely together 'somewhere' along the race route to clear weather. Needless to say this is highly irregular and only once in about a decade has the race committee had to pass-over an official stop for weather. The reality is that the clouds are expected to stay several days so if the racers don't move somewhere East soon, it will be impossible to make it to Maine by Friday anyway.

Once we get clarity where the planes are flying to, we will update the blog. Should see some movement soon on the MapProgress tracking link at www.airraceclassic.org so stay tuned.

-ed

90% of the race teams are stuck under this Nebraska cloud