I just finished a LIMC - LEBL flight and at a cruising 28,000 feet I encountered a strong TS for about 80 miles with lightning and thunder all the time all very nice but I found it very strange that with an outside temperature
of -30 C ° heavy rain was displayed which continued up to 7000 feet approaching LEBL where the outside temperature it had risen to + 10 C °.

This is the answer received by HIFI Damian Developer:

 

""  We adhere to the surface condition and aloft condition data temps, and if precip is indicated in the METAR, we also  depict it accordingly. With + TSRA for example it is common to see heavy rain under and in cloud, with hail possible under the anvil section depending on tstorm intensity and height, other moisture and stability conditions parameters, and some randomness.

Did you expect snow or hail?

Rain doesn't necessarily freeze at 0C. 0C is more of a melting point vs. a freezing point when it comes to icing / freezing  of visible moisture. Freezing requires nuclei (small particles, ice crystals, etc.) and when it doesn't freeze you have supercooled water droplets, water not frozen but below 0C. The most dangerous kind is called SLD (supercooled large droplets) and is very common within thunderstorms. This non-frozen water begins to freeze quickly when it contacts the airplane (now having something to freeze to) causing severe icing that runs back over the wing and control surfaces.

It's not until below -40C that supercooled water droplets will certainly freeze without surrfaces / external nuclei.  Below -15C there begins to be more frozen ice crystals vs. supercooled water droplets but the unfrozen water still exists. tl; dr: This is normal and expected, and realistic and dangerous aspect of aviation weather that should be avoided.
See https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Supercooled_Water_Droplets "" 

 

I replied that in my many "real" flights that began in 1970, I have never seen "raining" with the drops that flowed on the window like in my LIMC-LEBL flight when the plane was at high altitude and with outside temperatures of dozens degrees below zero while, I will be wrong, but I have the feeling that if the METAR signals TS + RAIN we do not consider the altitude and the relative external temperature which, with tens of degrees below zero, it is more logical to see the formation of ice, hail or snow.

RobPol471 - I would concur with your observation about rain at that altitude! The answer by HIFI about supercooled water droplets is also correct! Supercooled water droplets are the reason you get precipitation in Antartica! You may encounter rain inside the TS at higher levels but generally it stops above F150 because of the laws of physics and droplet sizes, an updraught may carry it aloft but the increasing droplet size means after a point gravity and weight take over and it falls out again - as rain!. It can be ejected at higher altitudes but it will be ice (hail). Perhaps the representation of ice is off not the level of precip in the atmosphere - hard to say! 

@RobPol471

I'm on the same boat as you. At FL280 with OAT -30C there is no way that you would see rain on the windshield, no matter what the temperature inversion is.

Yes, at those high altitudes you can expect to hear noise from ice particles on windshields or fuselage.

Anyhow, it might be a simulator representation, coding issue, or just that is too complicated for him to program that way. Maybe is just confused between moisture and actual rain?

I will say this, in over 40 years of commercial flying I did not see rain on my windshield at FL280 with OAT -30C.

But again, in this business, we learn every day and see unbelievable stuff.

1 hour ago, killthespam said:

@RobPol471

I'm on the same boat as you. At FL280 with OAT -30C there is no way that you would see rain on the windshield, no matter what the temperature inversion is.

Yes, at those high altitudes you can expect to hear noise from ice particles on windshields or fuselage.

Anyhow, it might be a simulator representation, coding issue, or just that is too complicated for him to program that way. Maybe is just confused between moisture and actual rain?

I will say this, in over 40 years of commercial flying I did not see rain on my windshield at FL280 with OAT -30C.

But again, in this business, we learn every day and see unbelievable stuff.

Yep, agreed, that has been my experience as well after a lifetime of commercial flying. Seen some whacky weather but never rain above the freezing level except in a nasty downdraught. 

 

Thank you @coastaldriver and @killthespam  for confirming my impressions and there is a confirmation on ... how easily we assert it is ascertainable on P3D.

If you put, for example, the default situation MAJOR THUNDERSTORM in the WHETER of P3D, the rain regardless from the height reached, it ceases when the outside temperature reaches 32 ° F (0 ° C).

This morning I did some test flights where the ASP3D METAR indicated TS or EAVY RAIN and I must confirm that even in this case when reaching 32 ° F (0 ° C) the rain stopped with a difference compared to the weather situation encountered and described in my first post and that is that the height of the clouds, in the test flights made this morning, at most have reached 18000 feet while the clouds of the TS during flight LIMC - LEBL I can estimate they were over 35000 feet but what struck me, despite having encountered a TS countless times during my flights carried out, it was the duration of about 80 miles of the TS where it was a continuous of lightning, thunder and ... rain.

It is necessary to consider that the LIMC - LEBL route therefore Italy-France-Spain is affected in these days by violent TS, for example in Italy there have been tornadoes, flood situations with a lot of damage and violent hailstorms such as the one that a few days ago severely damaged many hundreds of car on a highway in northern Italy. 

After a satellite search with the help of various METARs I was able to identify a severe TS + RA situation above the apt LGKR (Corfu).

Well, as the photo shows, the rain continued, in this case up to 22500 feet with an outside temperature of 0 ° F which corresponds to -17 ° C.

https://i.imgur.com/YHK5YuZ.png?1

May I ask you the following, please?

I would like to take out of our scenario  ActveSky for the moment.

Just don't load any other wx software and enter manually a custom wx situation. Clouds between 20K and 24K with appropriate temps and rain. 

Now at that speed, altitude and wx conditions you should not see any precipitation on the windshield, if so the answer is obvious.

RobPol471 - just a thought it may not be the weather program but rather the rain on window effect. I do not have any sim models that use that effect so I have never seen rain on the windscreen even on the ground. 

Hi killthespam,

I had done in part, as written in my previous post, a test using   the default situation MAJOR THUNDERSTORM in the WHETER of P3D but leaving the default cloud height which, however, did not exceed 10/12000 feet and with this situation P3D when the thermal zero was reached stops the rain.

Now I have done a test that everyone can do by raising the height of the clouds and the maximum that P3D has accepted it was 30,000 feet and as the photo shows the rain is there with an outside temperature of 0 ° F -17 ° C this time around 19000 feet.

So it seems that P3D 5.2 HF1 stops the rain when 0 ° C is reached but if the height of the clouds is very higher then the rain continues to fall even with temperatures well below freezing.

https://i.imgur.com/XOMFrEQ.png
 

36 minutes ago, RobPol471 said:

Hi killthespam,

Now I have done a test that everyone can do by raising the height of the clouds and the maximum that P3D has accepted it was 30,000 feet and as the photo shows the rain is there with an outside temperature of 0 ° F -17 ° C this time around 19000 feet.

So it seems that P3D 5.2 HF1 stops the rain when 0 ° C is reached but if the height of the clouds is very higher then the rain continues to fall even with temperatures well below freezing.

https://i.imgur.com/XOMFrEQ.png
 

I will try later with your settings to see what I can get and compare.

I don't understand why P3D will limit clouds at 30K? It should allow CBs to high altitudes, 40k, 50k 60K. I have to try later.

Interesting findings. Really, it's a game, but I think that some adjustments could be attempted.

@RobPol471

I think that the main issues are related to the P3D wx engine.

In my case, after 4 attempts and waiting for over 3 minutes with major ts I was not able to get any rain. Only on the 5th try, I got it.

On Active Sky it was consistent, but I had to wait 1 min or so to see it.

 

 

Regarding the 30K cloud limit, I was able to adjust up to 60K without any issues. See the pics.

 

 

Your PC specs are very good and should not give you any issues unless something went wrong during the installation of the P3D.

 

As a side note, not even on million dollars factory or airline simulators you will see cloud formations as in real-life conditions.

 

At the same time, I fully agree that some improvement to the P3D wx engine/depiction is necessary and I strongly disagree with the answer you got from AS. They also need to do some adjusting, if they can.

You don't really expect a decades old sim engine to simulate precipitation at high altitudes as supercooled rain. 
That would make the chickens laugh. The simulators (FS, FSX up to P3D5) can not handle realistic weather simulations without addons and show only the weather, which is imported by software from outside with the minimum data you have, from METAR, which only capture data up to a certain altitude and radius of an airport.
So I think the weather in P3D is not a weather simulation but only a representation of it.
There will simply be no supercooled water drops if the addon does not tell the simulator that these must be represented. So the addon can tell the simulator that it is snowing at 40 degrees C and the sim will show it. Even if it is nonsensical. Wheather in the Sim is only depiction, never a simulation from.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Hi killthespam,

thank you for taking the test but I did not understand if you did it using the ASP3D weather engine or selected the default Major Thunderstorm in P3D's Wheter.

In this regard I did not understand why I have to deselect ActiveSky Addon in Options - Add-ons of P3D and restart it otherwise if I use the default weather of P3D which foresees RA / SN,
these precipitations are totally lacking while, for example, in Major Thunderstorm in the Wheter of P3D they are regularly visualized clouds, lightning and the runway is wet instead RA rainfall is totally missing.

As for the cloud height issue, having hardly ever used those parameters before I'm sorry but I didn't understand that I had to select the Layer that enables the cloud heights and once selected
it's all gone O.K.

 

49 minutes ago, RobPol471 said:

Hi killthespam,

thank you for taking the test but I did not understand if you did it using the ASP3D weather engine or selected the default Major Thunderstorm in P3D's Wheter.

In this regard I did not understand why I have to deselect ActiveSky Addon in Options - Add-ons of P3D and restart it otherwise if I use the default weather of P3D which foresees RA / SN,
these precipitations are totally lacking while, for example, in Major Thunderstorm in the Wheter of P3D they are regularly visualized clouds, lightning and the runway is wet instead RA rainfall is totally missing.

As for the cloud height issue, having hardly ever used those parameters before I'm sorry but I didn't understand that I had to select the Layer that enables the cloud heights and once selected
it's all gone O.K.

 

Hi @RobPol471,

 

I did not use ASP3D in my pictures, just the default Major Thunderstorm in P3D's Weather.

I just recommended in our case for the test not to use AS (not to disable), in this way it will eliminate any interference with the native P3D wx trying to get an idea of what is happening.

As you noticed there are some issues with their presets or manual creating a scenario. Even today after a few updates they still have problems, especially with the EA clouds.

Maybe one day they will come around and fix the issues.

Regarding ASP3D I believe (but I could be wrong) that they might be limited somehow because of the P3D WX engine that is not helping at all.

From my point of view, there are some good representations but some are really bad.

Looking at different "flight simulators" each one of them has pluses and minuses. To be honest with you, even professional airline simulators have different issues and many times you can hear us saying "it's a simulator issue, the airplane it is not doing this".

I would suggest ignoring as much as you can, even you might go crazy or just try some other platforms, I know, it's frustrating and it turns out to get expensive.