Ice being blamed for latest crash?

[notadmblnd]

Here in Michigan we've had a warm trend. Been in upper 50's and the snow is all gone. Does anyone know what the weather's been like?

[wartrace]

1. It was snowing in Buffalo.

Remember that this crash happened at 10pm, not at 2pm. You may have HIGHS of 50 degrees but what are the lows? The Buffalo airport and the surrounding area is notorious for icing being downwind from Lake Erie.

[notadmblnd]

5. Thanks I had no idea what the conditions were.

when I heard that a 911 widow had perished in the crash, my tinfoil hat fell off the shelf and slipped on my head for a moment. It's back up on the shelf now, safe and secure.

[footinmouth]

2. I live near the crash site

I can vouch that the weather was far from ideal. We had high winds, rain, sleet and snow showers on and off all day. My son flew in earlier in the day yesterday and I was plenty worried for his flight to arrive safely. Flights were delayed on and off all day.

[eilen]

3. The weather in central and upstate NY

is always a mixed bag, much as you have probably experienced in Michigan with the lake effect. Yesterday, the weather was very rainy going from regular rain to frozen rain, to snow and sleet -- we call it "sleezing out"- I know it made some country roads very slippery (esp. at higher elevations) and they were salting down the highways. My boys tried to go snowboarding and they said it was impossible, like going through slush. Buffalo has similar conditions and I expect the precipitation was a little worse as the airport is located somewhat between both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Our temps were between 28-36 degrees in the day, probably lower at night. In the am, snow covered my driveway and my car was coated in ice.

I live in the Syracuse area, about 2.5 hours east of Buffalo.

[Muttocracy]

4. as the other posters said, a changing combo of rain, sleet, wind gusts

I flew home from the midwest to Newark to upstate NY on Wednesday, following part of the same storm system that caused the tornadoes further south. My first flight was delayed, then flew way high over the clouds (seemed a lot higher than the same path westward a few days earlier). It was quite bumpy for much of the flight as we went between cloud layers. The landing in Newark was excellent. Many flights there were delayed or cancelled - noticed many to upstate NY were. My second plane was late arriving at Newark. The flight was one of the rockiest I've ever had (being on a 12-seater in a storm years ago was worse). We were nervously joking with and praising the flight attendant for not spilling drinks on any of us. There was mostly rain, maybe some snow almost the whole way and we were bouncing up and down or rocking left-right at times. Even after we came down through the last cloud layer, we were flying what felt like close to the ground and getting bounced around a lot, and rocking left-right. Somehow they made such a smooth gradual landing at the very end that I couldn't tell exactly when we touched down. It was pouring rain when I walked out to my car.

12 hours later we were getting 45mph wind gusts, temperature was dropping throughout Thursday, and we got rain/snow/sleet intermingled all day. I would imagine the wind gusts could have been worse closer to the Great Lakes. I haven't heard wind gusts mentioned, but surely some ice + wind could lead to tragedy during landing :(

[Muttocracy]

6. flightaware.com has the flight path and it has some sort of radar in the background

if anyone knows how to translate their color patches into weather info. I wonder about those two red spots it went through before the crash - extra cold/ice?

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/CJC3407/history/20090213/0031Z/KEWR/KBUF