Thanks bose-x, very relieved to hear there's a few people who don't blunder about trying to predict the weather 3 months in advance
Incidentally I read another article in Flyer about GA risk by our own John Farley - the realisation that flight test is safer then GA is fairly startling, and very true once you think about it
But that doesn't preclude long trips as long as you truely know what you're doing and have a backup plan for most situations.