Try as I might, I keep dipping my remote weather-sensor-thing into Florida country, hoping to catch the big one, but only coming out with clear sailing or rainy with baby gusts.Any idea if FS can capture a hurricane?Andrew

You have to realize that during a hurricane, weather conditions are so extreme that quite often station data can't be retrieved, or is corrupted. Also, hurricane force winds extend a fairly close distance to the center of the hurricane--20 miles or less. If you manage to catch a report from a station still online at the time the hurricane hit, you might get lucky and experience hurricane conditions. I checked the NWS not quite an hour ago (5:30EST) and most stations were reporting moderate winds--only Ft. Meyers was up there. -John

Hi John - I tried Ft. Meyers and a few other stations that were currently reporting really rough conditions, according to weather.com...I don't see what all these sissies are talking about.. boo hoo, we've got 16 mph winds gusting to 19! ;)It would be interesting if there was a way to set up FS to record conditions for a range of reporting stations over, say, a 24-hour period.Andrew

Humm... get yourself Active sky ;-) Just landed at KRSW within the hour to no visibility, sustained winds at 47 with gusts to 68... To add to the difficulty it was nearly a straight crosswind into rwy 24 ( a backcourse) ;-) The first lights I saw I thought were the end of the runway... I was wrong, they were the dang lights on the top of the tower, LOL!

I flew into RSW today and AS2k4 had a 36 kt crosswind. Took me two tries at the landing but I nailed it on the second go. Hooah! Who says you need rudder pedals to take on a crosswind ;)

If you want some real fun, fly with r/weather between Phoenix and Socal right now... We have a series of cells building up, some with winds in excess of 60kts... Eight years ago, we experienced hurricane force winds (peaking at 100kts) for over 45 minutes--two mesocyclones collided over Phoenix and started spinning around each other. It caused close to a billion dollars in damage. Every house on my street had roof damage except one--mine. My wife didn't bug me about my choice of lots after that storm. But it would have been quite a ride in MSFS had I been able to DL the weather.A funny story in another of our storms--Sky Harbor took a direct hit. One of the terminal signs--you know, the huge things telling you the airlines--was blown away and never seen again. Can you imagine some guy waking up in some distant city wondering how the heck he had something like that sitting in his pool :)-John

Hurricane >>>>>>> Thunderstorm:-hah

just landed at tampa with active sky, and was at a 45 degree angle to the runway on touchdown. Lot's of tire smoke...billg

I did a flight around 8:30 EST from Miami to Winter Haven. Landed in 40kt winds, gusting to 55kts with 1/4 mile vis.XP Home SP1Asus P4P800-SE Intel 3.0GHZDDR 400 D/C 2x512MBGeForce FX 5700 256MB (56.72)SB AudigyMSFF2 & X45 throttleSee you in the fence...CYYZ

I was lucky to catch a good weather download at Port Charolette yesterday and saved it. In the DC3 it starts bouncing then starts geting airbourne. I would load up the curtiss and it would just fly up and back til it crashed. The thing that I found that i never have seen is the wind sock moving back and forth incidating winds from not just one heading and the tail of it fluttering in the wind. Wish all the trees did that.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/87907.jpg

Didn't have to catch it. It caught us ... here in Lakeland in a big way - though not to the extent of those directly in the eye path. We probably had gusts to 80 and sustained 60-70 mph winds here. I saw no damage at the Lakeland airport this morning (although there may have been some), but nearby Bartow had some damage as well as Lake Wales (even more so). We have some very good hangars here, though I doubt they would have survived the 145 mph winds that thing brought ashore. Many of you may have seen the news reports of the airport damage at Charlotte County, where the storm made landfall. Nearly everything on the field was mangled, and many aircraft were destroyed. I flew along a portion of the eye track between Haines City and Wachula around noon (dodging the news helicopters) and the damage is unbelievable. Businesses, homes, schools, flattened...trees stripped of leaves and flattened as well, and the death toll is climbing. Damage estimates in the tens of billions of dollars. This was the most devastating storm to hit the West coast of Florida since 1921 and may exceed Andrew in total damage.Leon

FS could probably catch one, but doubtful it would render it accuratly. The thing you have to remember whether your using FS weather or Active Sky downloads (or any other for that matter), is that the reports you get are 1 hour old. The weather stations report hourly, on the hour. Chances that anyone gets a weather report that is "up to the minute" are slim to none. In some cases such as a hurricane situation, it could be possible to get lucky once in a while and get the weather dead on.From the screenshot above, if that was up to the minute and truly accurate, FS' rendition of it is far from being close. You wouldn't have had that kind of visibility in the real world. I've went hurricane chasing in the past, but after coming up short so many times, I finally gave up. Your better off just customising a weather situation manually.

Hi Andrew (hmmm! you didn't storm through South Florida a few year's back, did you! As in Hurricane Andrew!!)I just got back online from hurrican Charley. We had minor damage to our pool screen by a tree that is still on top of it. Another large tree in my front year toppled toward the street. Our curbs are now littered with tree branches and stumps until they can be picked up. Yet today, many are without power.The planes I normally fly from Orlando Executive are now 80% totalled. The Citabria that I was flying to get my tailwheel endorsement is probably close to totalled.W. Sieffert