Feb 27: Transit
to Wake Island arriving Feb28 IDL-W.
Flight 6 Summary – Kona to Wake Island transit
As in other transit flights, several in-progress
walls were planned for this transit flight. Model
products indicated that some Asian outflow might be encountered
just west of Hawaii, but that mostly clean conditions should prevail.
Results:
As expected, clean conditions prevailed over
much of the flight, but an unexpected layer of pollution was found
at 10Kft. This layer
was extremely thin (only 1,000ft) and persisted over the entire
distance from Kona, Hawaii to Wake Island. Wind
speeds in this layer were often less than 1 knot signalling this
to be a stagnant layer trapped between subsiding air above and
a strong inversion at 7Kft.