Weather at Leeds

[L.N.T.]

Hi All,

I'm looking for a bit of help in completing an A-Level geography project. I’m looking into the affect weather has on transport, and as a wannabe, I want to try to concentrate on the aviation side of things.

I would really appreciate any information on how weather affects operations at LBA at different times of the year. Living close to the airfield, I would imagine that wind and visibility would be the main factors, but it would be good to link them to specific times of the year. Also, would I be correct in thinking that the prevailing winds at LBA are a westerly? Does this change at different times of the year?

Thank you in advance

L.N.T

[Yellow Sun]

L.N.T.

In the days when met offices and forecasters actually had offices at airfields, you would find one of the books they kept was a large tome entitled "Airfield Diagrams". The book covered most military and civilian airfields and gave statistical met information for the airfield. It's main feature however was the description of the local topography and the weather conditions that might be expected in various common met situations throughout the year.

Find a copy of "Airfield Diagrams" and most of your questions will be answered. I would start with the Met Office itself, but bear in mind you might have to find an old met man who remembers it!

Good Luck

YS

[barry lloyd]

Coupled with the weather is the fact that, as you probably know, LBA is one of the highest airports in the UK, which, given our propensity for low cloud, particularly over the Pennines, means that LBA gets more than it's fair share of 'weather'. It's a long time since I had to remember all that stuff, and there are others out there who can give you a more up to date technical breakdown of this than I can, but try this for starters:
The prevailing winds over most of the UK are westerly, and thus most airfields' runways are somewhere about the 26/27/28 heading. Of course there are northerlies in the winter, and south-westerlies in the summer (sometimes!), and easterlies are by no means uncommon, both in summer and winter nowadays, but most frequently in winter.
Visibility is an important factor, and I seem to remember that LBA suffered a fair amount of low vis - sometimes caused by cloud, and sometimes simply by mist/fog. I imagine this is no longer the case, but the close proximity of industry (woollen mills etc), added to this problem in the past.
Hope this is of some help.

[Halfwayback]

I think Barry Lloyd is right.

It was no accident when LBA (or Yeadon as it was!) got the four letter designator EGNM.

It is well known that it stands for Normally Murky!

HWB

[Yellow Sun]

L.N.T.

If you haven't done so already, got to Met Office (http://www.metoffice.org.uk/) Select the "Library and Archive" option and then"Search the on-line Catalogue " option and do a Title Search for "Airfield Diagrams". You will find that they hold a reference copy. Having noted the details all you then have to do is email/phone them saying that you need copies of the pages relevant to Leeds Bradford and you will get all that you require.

There may be a charge for the photocopies, but it will be well worth it.

Let us know how you fare.

YS

[WATABENCH]

With the ILS landing sytems available nowadays you can run a very succesful airport in an area with a dreadful weather record, take where i work in BRS, its the 2nd highest airport in the UK, and suffers from a low cloud base and bad crosswinds, but just keeps expanding its route network, it landed(pardon the pun) a New York route ahead of other airports such as CWL bidding for it, CWL has a much better weather record and a much longer runway than BRS, also BRS is Easyjets biggest base outside of London, Its goes to show that companies such as Easyjet and Continental Airlines don't see weather as a massive problem.
The sudden mass expansion in BRS happened after they installed a CAT 3 landing system, it really is phenominal how much traffic BRS handles now, go back 5 years when the new terminal buliding opened it was handling less than CWL, now it handles nearly double what CWL does, 5 million expected this year.
There are a few ramblings on the BRS thread regarding weather down here, I think BRS is a prime example that with the right structure an airport can be very succesful even when you have the eliments against you.:ok:
Good luck with the A levels:ok: