Weird weather phenomenon

[Guest Dominik Mann]

Well, there I was today, en route from Vienna to Tokyo on Simubuild's A345, and cruising over Mongolia at 37k feet, when suddenly the entire sky above me turned into a solid white...much like fog, I'd say. However, I find it strange that such a phenomenon would appear at 37,000 feet and above...?! I encountered the same phenomenon again twice or thrice later on my flight, including the last twenty miles or so on my approach to Tokyo. I was using FS's built-in real weather feature.Could anybody more knowledgeable with weather enlighten me here?Cheers,

[Guest ScottPilot]

It is possible for there to be overcast layers of ice crystals at the altitudes you are describing.I have seen this many times flying over the continental U.S. in jet aircraft.There can be many reasons for this from higher than normal moister content in the air to heavily traveled jet routes where the cumulative contrails from many jet engines actually form their own overcast layers.I flew a trip once in the winter from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Dallas, Texas, where even at FL370 we were IMC (instrument Metrological Conditions) all the way. It was just like flying in the fog at lower altitudes.As far as your experience in flight simulator, I don't know how the program was interpreting the METAR download for that altitude. In real-world aviation, some of the high-level overcast layers of clouds and fog are not always reported except through pilot reports.As far as I know, flight simulator's weather system doesn't download those.Finally, there is an excellent book that you can purchase for around $15 at Amazon.com that I use with my student pilots during their weather training that has a ton of information available in it about aviation weather. It is called:

[gosta 0]

Apart from the real weather phenomena that Scott desribed, there is some sort of a bug in FS, that occasionally adds a very thin cirrus layer exactly at your aircraft's altitude. It does not seem to be an FSUIPC issue, as I experienced this with or without the option to add an occasional cirrus layer in FSUIPC. You can easily remove the layer with the weather menu (Local Weather/Advanced/Clouds). This will not affect the rest of your downloaded weather.Cheers,Gosta.

[Guest flightpro08]

I've seen this once or twice before. From the appearance of it, it appears to be an FS2k2 bug. It doesn't happen very often and is usually only for a few minutes.Ryan-Flightpro08 :-coolVATSIM Pilot/ControllerZLA ARTCC Controller 1 (C-1)SAN TRACON Lead [link:www.taxiwaysigns.com]Taxiwaysigns.com Scenery Designer-----------------------------My "Home Made" System Specs:Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz ProcessorTurbo Gamer ATX Mid-Tower with 420W Power SupplyEPoX 4G4A Motherboard with Intel 845G ChipsetVisiontek XTASY GeForce4 128MB Ti4600 (Det 29.42 WHQL Drivers)512MB PC2100 DDR RAM40GB Matrox 7200RPM Hard DriveWindows XP Home Edition SP1*No CPU or GPU Overclocking*3dMark2001SE Score: 11298

[Guest]

By the way guys do you get turbulence or thunderstorms at about 35,000? I'm sure even at high altittudes somewhere there can be a storm at this high?