Hominid

It's been one of the curses of the case. The media has from the start produced garbage about the case. I think it's been basically for two reasons: (1)The "journalist" understood practically nothing he read or was told by someone who actually knew something, and; (2)The stress was always on the "Robin Hood" romantic adventure angle. Yeah. Part of the curse. Interest is entertainment rather than fact reporting.

May I be excused now (for sleep)? Oh, hell. I'm gonna be assertive. Good night!

OK. About your "anomolies": I don't trust your unnamed researcher. Reversal systems? With an internet search I find no reference to "reversal system" in relation to weather. I've NEVER seen anything about such. I doubt the existence of such a thing. Weather reversal would involve an opposite type front coming to an area. I suggest getting info directly from a meteorologist, especially one in or near Portland. ANON 2nd hand account of Bohan's existence. Nothing here about weather, much less bad weather. I would not doubt this. The 8pm forecast for Portland says broken at 2700' base and overcast at 5000' base. This means that, looking up from some position at the airport, the 5000' layer, plus the lower layers, had to be blocking over .9 of the sky. The top layer had to be blocking at least 4/10 of the sky (if the lower 2 layers were blocking .5 of it). It is possible a pilot could see down between clouds in different layers, especially if looking somewhere other than directly at the airport--the reverse of the path used by the airport observer. And the airport observation might have been a little different by 8:15pm. I would not doubt this. I think the icing is in the data we have, and we have seen a couple of statements about minor turbulence (by Rat if I recall correctly). Neither the icing at 10K' nor the minor turbulence is "bad weather." I would question whether "had their hands full" related to the weather. I think the term "broken" may not have been used in the same sense that a metorologist or aviator would, but I would not doubt that it was possible to see through the clouds at some times and places. Consistent with weather data we have. Again, not "bad" weather. "Experts"? Examine what? His word was allegedly good (third hand). But, did he say anything? Nothing here about weather being bad. Surely not talking about searching the flight path on the night of the hijacking? Rain is not terrible. Fog is not terrible. Snow is not terrible (unless it was in Portland), and it didn't occur around Vancouver that night. Wet and rainy is "horrible"? HARD rain for an extended time might be "horrible". Cold? Winter, but not even freezing. Wind blowing constantly for a while, or strong wind? Surface weather near water bodies is almost always different than away from the water. This was in Seattle. What's "rain-lashed"? I don't find that in meteorology stuff. An FBI agent actually said that? Appears that he had been standing out in the light rain for a while. He could have been soaked by mist. Being wet is consistent with weather data we have--not severe weather. Even solid, consistent rain isn't "bad" weather. Where's the part about the gale force winds? The hail? Where was the flight at 4pm when it said it "was in severe turbulence and hard rain"? Over mountains, like around Toledo? This could have been some significant weather even though the description is qualitative. But where? And this was 4 hours before the time we're concerned with. The records support the idea of lots of cloud cover on the 24th and 25th. The search and heavy snows came after. Account doesn't support the idea of strong weather on hijack date.

Georger, Were you thinking that the anecdotal examples you gave were about "bad" weather?

The 80kt was about en-route headwind. I think the 66 was not intended to be spead at all. I think the author probably meant 160-166.

Mr. Farflung, Where did you get the 66 knot?

No, the above was not a caveat. The worst weather I can imagine based on the data I've seen would be a brief period of heavy rain or wind. There are things other than the actual weather that could explain at least some anecdotal reports. Of that data I've examined about the weather on hijack night, I have found nothing that supports the idea that there was any severe weather. I am still looking at data trying to find any clue that would indicate severe weather. Yes. I'm trying to be thorough and give the question my best shot. If I get some more data, I'll look at it too (even anecdotes).

In two recent posts I separately mentioned: (1)the thumb-shaped 1016 isobar that was a few miles east of Portland at 4am on hijack day, and (2)that a calm apparently beset Portland from 4pm to 7pm before flight 305 came by. There is a relationship between such isobar shapes and "light and variable" winds. I've attached a copy of that "thumb" marked up to show how surface winds would be along the positions on the inside of that isobar. Note how the wind direction varies radically all along the isobar position. At positions inside the thumb, the pressure gradient would be very, very low. This is because, no matter which way an air molecule would look, it would see almost the same pressure out ahead of it. Because the gradient is low, the wind speed would be low. If you could quickly travel along the isobar, you would see a low wind that would change direction all along the route. If you quickly went across the thumb, you would see the wind drop to near zero speed then come back in almost the opposite direction. You'd see the same if you were still and such an isobar "thumb" passed your position. An isolated "pocket" (closed boundary) low or high would produce basically the same result. In fact, such an isolated pocket very likely existed inside that 1016mBar thumb at 4am. It's typical. It doesn't show on the surface chart because the chart shows a pressure line only for every fourth whole millibar. It's like looking at terrain on a topo map. I don't see how this relationship can be definitely "blamed" for the 4pm-7pm calm shortly before jump time. The isobars were moving basically northward. The surface chart for 4pm on the 25th does not show any "thumb" isobar shape (or even a bump) at or north of Portland. The isobar estimate for 8pm doesn't show one near Portland.

Bruce, I can imagine that someone unaccustomed to "fierce weather" might be really impressed by a minute of wind and rain, especially at night. I think that's about the extent of basis in the weather itself. But, there's plenty of other potential basis. There is the Cooper case "flame" for moths. The anecdotes are not from a random sample. People who come forward on their own may have different motives for doing so. If you surveyed a lot of people who were in the area that night, how would they all describe the weather? There is faulty 40-year-old memory that has been bombarded for the entire 40 years with accounts about the "terrible storm." What in a memory is what actually happened vs. what the person thinks happened because they've heard it for years? There is perception. People have different ideas about what "bad" weather is. How many of the "many" accounts were documented by the observers on that night or even the next morning? Was there even one that had specific description of the weather? Bottom line is we have documented 8pm and 9pm reports from trained weather observers and automated stations scattered around. On the other hand are 40-year-old memories (or fabrications) of people who were scattered around at different places. The overall weather was not of a nature that should have large differences from one place to another.

What about the claims of high winds aloft? Image 3b of the data Georger posted is standard FAA/weather service forecasts of winds, at various stations and altitudes, intended to be "for use" starting at 10pm on hijack night and extending for nine hours beyond. The winds should not have been greatly different at around 8:15pm. But how accurate were the forecasts? I compared the 18K' forecasts for 20 of the stations I could identify in the message with the wind speed and direction info on the 500mBar chart for 4am on the 25th (3 hours before the end of the forecast "for use" time). I found the agreement was very good for all but 5 of the stations, and was good for those 5. The five: The 18K' wind over Billings was forecast at 42kt from 250° but turned out to be coded 50kt from 270°. Dillon, MT wind forecast at 34kt turned out to be 40. Kalispell and Spokane winds forecast at 22kt turned out to be 30. Green Bay's forecast at 60kt turned out to be 40kt. It is probable that these differences were from the jetstream taking a slightly different path than had been expected, making winds higher in some places and lower in others.. Because the forecast was good for 18K' altitude, it should have been good also for 9K' and 12K'. The wind speeds forecast for 10pm and later were 30kt or more at 9K' for only 4 stations in the entire area covered by the report. Those stations were Green Bay, Minneapolis, Boise, and Idaho Falls. All of these but Idaho Falls were forecast to be 30kt, and Idaho Falls was forecast to be 33kt. For 12K' the highest forecast speed was 40kt for Minneapolis and 42kt for Green Bay. Seven other stations were forecast to have barely over 30kt. The majority of the stations had forecasts of less than 30kt at 12K'. PDX was forecast to have 31kt from 255°-265° at 12K' and 26kt from the same direction at 9K'. No sustained winds over 30kt at 10K' or below for Portland. Maybe turbulence. Maybe some transient isolated high wind. There has been at times discussion of mysterious Capt. Bohan flying behind flight 305 at 14K' and encountering an 80kt headwind. Sluggo reported on his conversation with Himmelsback about this. Per Sluggo, Himmelsback also said a cold front was coming in. As already mentioned, there were no winds over 60 knots at altitudes of 9K', 12K', or 18K' at any of the stations represented in the winds aloft report shown in image 3b (either forecast or on the 500mBar chart). This included stations from Green Bay to Seattle and Portland, and south down into California, Colorado, Reno and Albequerque. Green Bay, Minneapolis-St.Paul and Aberdeen had the highest forecast for 24K' and they were only 74-77 knots. I think 80kt at 14K' for a period greater than a few seconds was impossible. And, there was no cold front coming in. Maybe a cooling trend, because the area had been heated on the 24th. The claims seem so far "out there" that I would not even accept the existence of "Bohan" without seeing proof of it.

I took a copy of surface chart for the 25th, cleaned off most info other than locations, added some locations for which I could find atmospheric pressure for 8pm on jump night. Then added the pressures for stations I could identify in Georger's image 6b, plus some from Weather Underground. Then estimated isobars for 8pm on jump night. Could add some of the other info typically on a surface chart.

My understanding of the occluded front was wrong. This particular occluded front was what is called a warm occluded front. Cool air having caught up with where warmer (less cool) air is already pushing up against even colder air, pushes under the warm air, but over the colder air to the east. Net effect is that the two warmer (least cold) of the three air masses are pushed up over the coldest air to the east. This cools the warmer air masses and causes precipitation.

Forgot. Yes, things can get very, very windy if those isobars are too close to each other.

Thanks, 377. I sent him an e-mail a couple of days back just saying some here had expressed concern about him. No response.

Maybe discussion of weather around Vancouver on hijack night will be facilitated by understanding of the overall weather situation in the region at the time--what some in weather call the "regime." I'm not a meteorogist, so some of it may not be precisely correct, but here's how I understand that regime to be. The weather on hijack day was being produced by a lot of warm water in the ocean to the west. The warm water arrived there from the western Pacific tropics via the "Japan current." The warm water off the coast of southernmost Alaska, having a lot of cold land and air around it to the northwest, north and northeast, warmed the air over the ocean and also humidified it. That reduced the density of the air and caused it to rise. Result: a VERY STRONG atmospheric low (

Please excuse the interruption, and the length of this post. There have been some claims that the weather was very bad as Flight 305 came through the Vancouver-Portland area. Some of this has been in relation to someone in a helicopter at unspecified locations and times, but at 2500'. Some has been about the Columbia River Gorge (which extends many miles to the east along the river starting a few miles east of Portland and Vancouver, and is basically the border between Oregon and Washington in that area). The claims are inconsistent with NWS data that has been reproduced at WeatherUnderground.com, but the weather data FBI agent Carr posted (then, Georger reposted) provides an opportunity to check about the claims using data that was actually produced by the predecesor to the National Weather Service on that night. The data includes reports of weather conditions for Portland International Airport (PDX), Troutdale airport, Toledo airport and The Dalles at 8pm (image 6b), 9pm (image 5b) and 9:17pm (part 1 of image 1b) PST. Troutdale is a little east of PDX practically at the mouth of the gorge. The Dalles is further east, actually in the gorge. Toledo is a few minutes north of the Vancouver plain. PORTLAND AIRPORT The maximum cloud coverage ("overcast") was at a base of 5000' for all three observations, from 8pm through 9:17pm. Over that time frame, the "broken" layer base rose from 2700' to 3100' to 3500' (all AGL). In other words, the layer that (with any lower layer) provided over .5 coverage was rising over the period. The sky was clearing below 3500' and a helo at 2500' AGL would have been below most of the cloud coverage the entire time. Over that same time sequence, an 8pm "scattered" layer at 1500' AGL was gone at 9pm, but was then back at 9:17. In place of that scattered layer, a few "CUFRA" at 1500' were reported at the intermediate time (when the scattered layer had disappeared). I believe from this that the CUFRA was the remains of the scattered layer of clouds rather than clouds that were ripped away from larger clouds by winds, or formed by the higher clouds. That is, the scattered clouds had shrunk to almost nothing and were identified as CUFRA because of their appearance. A 2500' helo would be above this base in clear air or scattered clouds. Also, the horizontal visibility (air "clear-ness") peaked at the intermediate observation time. It was 7 statute miles (SM) at 8pm, went up to 10SM at 9pm (when the low clouds were disappearing), then went back to 6SM at 9:17. Light showers were reported at each time. The existence of the data for 8pm and 9pm in the data Carr posted gives us an opportunity to fill in between the 7pm and 10pm data from WeatherUnderground. Combining data from the sources shows that the wind speed went from 4.6mph at 7pm, to 11.5mph at 8pm, to 12.67mph at 9pm, to 11.5mph at 10pm. The wind speed went abruptly up from nearly dead calm between 7pm and 8pm, then stayed approximately constant for the next two hours. [inline wnd24th.bmp] Similarly, the wind direction changed from 130° (SE) at 7pm (when there was barely any wind) to 270° (W) at 8pm to 190° (S) at 9pm and to 200° (SSW) at 10pm. The abrupt change of the wind to west at 8pm, then back to SSW at 9pm is intriguing. (BTW: wind directions are plus or minus 5°.) Note how some possibly significant transient weather data is missed by WeatherUnderground because of their giving data for only every third hour. The wind direction for 7pm is basically meaningless because of the fact that the wind speed was so low. Winds often change direction frequently and erratically when their speeds are low. This is partly because the small perterbations in various directions are what remain when the sustained wind drops to near zero. The low wind has no "conviction." It's "indecisive." Other than the 8pm west wind, I do not see change much different than the changes for earlier and later days. If you're looking at the WeatherUnderground page for PDX on 11/24/71, you can select to view data for the entire week at the top of the data table.)(Also see attached.) However, the virtual dead calm from 4pm to 7pm is not present for days shortly before or after the 24th. What does that calm, followed by the abruptly higher speed and short-term west wind, imply for weather near Portland in the following hour? It looks like the 3 hours of calm was a calm before a weak windstorm, not a "calm before THE storm." But it may have just been a random situation of two 3-hourly observations in a row being the same. TROUTDALE AIRPORT From 8pm to 9pm to 9:17pm the base of the sky obscuring (overcast) cloud layer rose from 4000' to 6000' AGL. At 8pm no lower layer was reported. At 9pm a layer of "broken" clouds (over .5 coverage) developed at a little under 2200' AGL. It rose to 4000' AGL at 9:17, at which time a "scattered" layer had developed at 1500', the horizontal visibility had dropped to 7SM (from 10), and the wind direction had changed from 220° (SSW) to 270° (W). (wind directions ±5°) Over the period, wind speed had gone from 7kt to 21kt/24mph (9pm) to 12kt. Light showers at 8pm, very light at 9pm, and back to light at 9:17pm. In general, showers and vertical visibility diminished and wind increased for the intermediate observation. Then the wind direction changed and the horizontal visibility dropped a bit. The cloud cover heights increased, but a lower coverage layer appeared. A 2500' helo could have been above a cloud base at any time after 8pm. Generally mild weather at the mouth of the gorge, but the wind did pick up a bit after 8pm. THE DALLES Much of the info for 8pm (just below the line for Yakima "YKM") is illegible in the 8pm report. It appears that the wind was 9kt from 200°. At 9pm there was a "scattered" cloud layer at 1500' and a "broken" layer at an estimated 6000' (AGL). Visibility was 15SM. 6kt wind from 310°. No precipitation was reported for 9pm, rain having begun at 8:04 and ended at 8:06 (2 minutes of rain). At 9:17pm the scattered layer had risen to 2500' and the broken layer had fallen to 4000'. Light showers, wind 15kt (17mph) from 270° (W). The 9:17 report included "chance of light XC" (whatever that meant). For the entire day, the WeatherUnderground site indicates that The Dalles got only .08" of rain. In general, wind dropped and changed direction a bit at 9pm then went back some at 9:17. Cloud layer heights changed. Mild weather at this point in the gorge, except that the wind did go up a bit at 9:17. TOLEDO Toledo was not on the 9:17 report in image 1b, as far as I could tell. At 8pm its report said 3000' AGL overcast (complete cover), 12SM visibility, very light showers, 5kt from 190°, and rain had begun at 7:35. At 9pm the report was 3000' scattered, 3400' measured ceiling/overcast, the same visibility, no rain, 6kt (virtually the same) from the same 190°, and rain had ended at 8:05. Very mild conditions at both 8pm and 9pm a few miles north of Vancouver. A 2500' helo would have been under the cloud base.

Not familiar with that story. But, neither is possible. Coming back up the stairs lets the stairs come back up slowly. The stairs have to be very rapidly set free to rebound up quickly enough to cause a pressure pulse. When a person is not out at the end of the stairs the hole through which someone would have to jump from the top of even the moving part of the stairs is small and out quite a ways in front of the person. It would have to be an acrobatic dive.

It is highly probable that the jump was at the bump. However, it would be possible for a hijacker to make the bump occur before or after the jump. This would involve jamming the stairs down probably by jamming something between the struts and walls.

One strike, you're out. Good life lesson. You must have a lot of years left to benefit from this.

Didn't "they" tell you? If you back off you have to pay everyone on the thread!

Robert, No "sorry" needed. I've got copies of the winds and weather stuff. I was just hoping in vain for that 10K' wind info specifically for the probable jump locale and time.

Right. That post was not one of those in which he gave the wind speeds and directions for different altitudes. That one only has the reference to 30MPH. Post 1286 is one of those in which he gave winds at different altitudes. This is probably the one you remember. No. It doesn't have the cloud layers.

So, did Rataczak actually not know that the guy's name was Soderlind, or was it just the open-loop transcription?

Thanks Robert. Carr's data included 7000' and he said that it applied around Orchards and, in another post, around the 8:15 time. The "30 MPH" was buried in this post and elicited zero discussion, so I would consider it unconfirmed but possible. I do think it odd that he would give some info in one post about winds at 10,000', but then did not include 10,000' in his other posts about wind speed and direction.

I've read the thread once. And the previous one. I admit that I skipped posts by some, but I doubt they said what the winds were at 10,000'. I think going through it all is beyond the call of duty. I've also searched both threads.