by Paul Bertorelli

Flying convective weather is sometimes like feeling your way around a dark closet. And there’s more than one way to find the doorknob.

For all the modern tools available for ducking thunderstorms—sferics, airborne and ground radar, datalink weather—in the end, it all comes down to looking out the window and flying where it’s least scary. Or perhaps not flying at all. Even with onboard radar and sferics, there’s an understandable reluctance to poke your nose into a nasty black cloud that a Stormscope says is benign. When the eyeballs and the instruments don’t agree, the eyeballs usually win. …