I was in Washington, DC for the last week or so, visiting some relatives and acting like a tourist. I flew home last night, and before departure, the pilot announced the flight would take a bit longer than usual—five hours and 40 minutes—due to some routing for weather. In the end, it was almost another hour more than that, taking 6:27 from gate to gate.
After the announcement, I checked the weather map just before we departed, and indeed there were a couple storms in the midwest:
I figured the rerouting was to head a bit north of the ideal path, towards Minneapolis, to duck between the storms. Or maybe further north, into Canada. Oh how wrong I was!
After takeoff, we proceeded in a west to southwesterly direction, far off the ideal northwesterly "great circle" routing. How far south? Well, here's the idealized routing compared to our actual flight path:
I have never been on a flight from the east coast to Portland that got anywhere near Kansas, much less Oklahoma, Texas, or New Mexico…yet we were over all three yesterday. Why?
Because the independent storms I'd seen at takeoff had merged into one consolidated front, forcing the huge detour to the south. To see why, you can watch the replay of the flight on FlightAware, but this screenshot makes the problem obvious:
That storm front is over 1,050 miles (1,690 kilometers) long! And it wasn't just that our pilots were being extra cautious—almost nobody was going through that weather:
I was seated in a right-side window seat, and had an hours-long view of the massive front as we skirted the edge. As we came alongside the southern tip, I snapped a photo of the source of my extra time aloft (nearly an extra hour of travel time):
It was one hell of a massive storm. Kudos to all the pilots and crew who successfully dealt with that thing yesterday and got everyone to their destinations; you earned your pay and then some!