Frontal Remnants

Our typical cold fronts start with prefrontal Kona winds, perfect for soaring Diamond Head; then we get a day or two of rain; and then we get the crispiest postfrontal north or northwest flow, and we soar Dillingham and the North Shore. But sometimes the front doesn't quite make it here, and we just get the remnants of the moisture embedded in our tradewind flow, which is apparently what we have now: all the rain and none of the interesting wind directions! But we are still managing to score airtime and miles.

Friday started out totally rainy everywhere, but it gradually cleared up enough for people to head out to their favorite sites. Joey was reminded of why he loves Makapuu. Others flying there included Sidehill, Arizona Chandler, Dave, and Frosty. From Kahana, I got a quick jaunt to Kualoa to witness the prettiest cloud show ever. Once again my photos barely do justice to the real scenery and cloudscapes, but this time I have discovered the Clarity slider in Lightroom, and it seems to help a lot to define the clouds. Apparently people tend to overuse that feature once they discover it, so I'm going to try and avoid that right up front!

Woody and new student Steve hiked up with me, and we had a fun little session toplanding and buzzing around Steve on launch. Duck, Allegra and Sharky were on launch when I came back from Kualoa, but a nice little squall out front scared us all down to the landing zone for refreshments. And more refreshments.

These frontal remnants are a bit stingy with their flying windows but we're doing our best to time them.