Originally Posted by FlyingForFun
There was a warm front sitting fairly stationary over the airfield. Metform 215 gave the freezing level before the front as 0', and after the front as 6000', so we figured that the actual freezing level was probably somewhere between the two.
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- but this is the first time I have ever experienced totally unexpected ice. It took me completely by surprise, and I thought others might be interested in learning from it.
While I don't mean to labour the usual 20:20 hindsight stuff, and your post was well worthwhile, I would have thought that the "ISOL 2000 M FZRA, SEV ICE IN FZ RA. SUB ZERO LAYER SFC to 3000 FT" annotation on the F215 you looked at might have tempered your surprise.
BTW the Jet2 pilot has the benefit of higher speed, and therefore higher skin temperature. As a rule of thumb, never trust an icing pirep from anything faster than you.