Whiteout

Issue #046

✈️ The Crosswind Chronicles

Navigating life’s gusts, on and off the flight deck.

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From 41,000 Feet

Winter Storm Fern came in quietly at first, the way the most dangerous weather often does. No thunder. No warning sirens. Just ice. Layer after layer of it, sealing the world in place.

When the power went out, the silence was immediate and wrong. Not peaceful. Predatory. The kind of quiet that makes your ears ring because your brain knows something isn’t right. Outside, transformers popped in the distance, brief flashes of blue and green lighting up the ice like something alive. Then darkness again.

The temperature dropped fast. Five degrees an hour. You could feel it in the walls. In the floors. In the way the house stopped holding heat and started bleeding it. Every hour that passed made morning feel less like a relief and more like a threat.

The kids were asleep. That was the hardest part.

You want to protect them, but you don’t want to wake them. You don’t want them to feel the anxiety crawling up your spine. You don’t want to hand them fear when there’s nothing they can do with it. So you sit there, fully alert, listening to the quiet, doing math you don’t want to do. How cold it will be by sunrise. How long blankets will help. How much margin you really have.

It felt like being stalked by wolves you couldn’t see. Not the kind that rush you, but the kind that wait. If the power didn’t come back by morning, it wouldn’t be dramatic. It would be slow. Painful. The kind of cold that doesn’t just wake you up, it settles into you.

Ice is like that. It doesn’t announce danger. It accumulates quietly until suddenly everything is at risk.

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🛫 Dad NOTAM

Subject: Clearing the board does not always look like staying.

By day four of being snowed in, I realized how often my phone was in my hand.

I was clearing my board. Giving away trips. Watching premium opportunities pop up and disappear. One good premium trip could make the next month more comfortable, especially with a new build coming. In my head, this was responsibility. Planning. Providing.

The storm had caused delays and cancellations everywhere. Pilots were needed. Premium was paying 1.5x. Hundreds of options, and somehow none of them lining up. I was researching commute flights, watching weather windows, checking airport conditions, trying to solve everything from the couch.

It was all-consuming. And it amounted to nothing.

Inside the house, it looked like something else entirely.

Everyone was trapped together. The routine gone. The walls closing in. My wife carrying the weight of keeping the house functioning while I sat there, physically present but mentally scanning for exits. Not because I wanted to leave, but because I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.

At some point, the Captain pulled me aside. Not angry. Hurt.

To her, it looked like I couldn’t wait to get out. Like I was searching for a way to leave while she was locked into holding everything together. This was her responsibility. Her post. Her life. And I was on my phone trying to be anywhere else.

That wasn’t my intention. But intention doesn’t matter much when impact tells a different story.

What shifted wasn’t a fix, it was alignment. Naming that this was new for all of us. That the burden didn’t belong to one person. That systems could be built quietly, behind the scenes, without disappearing into a screen. That being on the same team mattered more than optimizing the next month.

Clearing my board didn’t mean clearing my attention. That part took work.

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🔁 Go-Around Report

When the first approach doesn’t work, go-around. You can always go-around.

I almost pushed it.

I justified it as preparation. As being careful. As staying ahead of the storm. I told myself I was just doing due diligence, just checking one more option, just making sure we didn’t miss something.

But winter weather doesn’t reward urgency. It punishes it.

In aviation, ice is a hard no. You don’t negotiate with it. You don’t test it. You respect it early or you pay for it later. The safest decision is almost always the least dramatic one, the one made before you feel forced.

The go-around here wasn’t about flying. It was about presence. Putting the phone down. Accepting that this wasn’t a season to plan my way out of. It was a season to hold position and support the crew already flying the hardest leg.

Tomorrow’s Approach: When conditions deteriorate, the earlier you stop trying to force movement, the smoother the recovery.

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🧭 Vectors for Home Base

Small adjustments to avoid family turbulence.

What helped wasn’t fixing the storm. It was normalizing life inside it.

We kept a routine as best we could. I got a workout in, not to train, but to burn off stress. We bundled the kids up and went outside, even though it was slippery. Pushed them around the driveway in a laundry basket turned sled, laughing at how ridiculous it looked. Cold air. Red cheeks. Temporary joy.

We cooked together. Let them help prep. Let the mess happen. Let them lead the moment instead of trying to manage it.

What didn’t help was chasing control. Refreshing screens. Living five steps ahead of the moment instead of inside it.

Storms don’t ask you to be efficient. They ask you to be present.

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🗝️ Airport Secrets

Why Ice Is Non-Negotiable

Ice is weight. Ice is drag. Ice changes everything.

Anything that builds up on the leading edge of a wing disrupts airflow. That separation degrades lift immediately. It doesn’t take much. Even a small amount of contamination can dramatically change how an aircraft performs.

On the ground, if you slip on ice at 150 or 200 pounds, you know how little traction there is. Now imagine that loss of friction under an aircraft weighing 170,000 pounds during landing. Braking effectiveness drops. Steering authority fades. Margins disappear fast.

That’s why deicing exists. It’s slow. It’s annoying. It backs up schedules. But it’s how we get the aircraft clean and keep it clean long enough to get airborne safely.

Early cancellations work the same way. Canceling before the storm hits shifts the problem from waiting to planning. It gives people time to find hotels, food, comfort. Waiting too long turns inconvenience into crisis.

Winter operations aren’t about convenience. They’re about buying margin before it’s gone.

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💼 Jumpseat Stories

Storms show up differently for everyone.

If you’ve got a story about riding one out, literal or otherwise, I’d love to hear it. Email me at crosswindchronicles@gmail.com. I read every note.

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🛎️ Subscribe

If you enjoy stories about flying, family, and learning that “standby” sometimes means stay put, subscribe to The Crosswind Chronicles.

No turbulence promised. But occasional dad jokes and weather delays may apply.

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Until the next leg,

Jake

First Officer, Dad, Human Trying Not to Stall