Weather — Commercial Depth
Commercial flying multiplies your weather exposure: more days flown, more variety of routes, more pressure to launch into marginal conditions. The PPL weather page covers the basics — fog formation, stability, METAR fundamentals. This is the next layer: convection, hazards, and the products you use to make a real go/no-go call. Each topic below has its own deep-dive page with FAA references, professional citations, and operational decision frameworks.
Hazards
Thunderstorms
Three required ingredients, life-cycle stages, single/multi/supercell types, full hazard list, METAR coding, Convective SIGMETs. The single most-tested CPL weather topic.
Turbulence
Convective vs mechanical, lee waves and rotor clouds, reading cloud appearance for in-cloud turbulence, urgent PIREP threshold, helicopter-specific gust response.
Wind Shear & Microbursts
LLWS thresholds, conditions producing shear, microburst geometry/lifespan/lethality, the "do not chase airspeed" recovery rule, LLWAS/TDWR detection.
Icing
Rime / clear / mixed structural ice with temperature ranges, freezing rain and the inversion mechanism, helicopter rotor icing as immediate emergency.
Fog & Visibility
Fog reporting codes (FG, BR, VCFG, MIFG, FZFG), vertical visibility vs ceiling, sandstorms/dust/smoke/volcanic ash as visibility hazards.
Products & decisions
Reports, Forecasts & Advisories
METAR, TAF, GFA, SIGMET, AIRMET (Sierra/Tango/Zulu), PIREP, AIREP. Coding, timing, scope, and which product owns which decision.
Helicopter Weather Decisions
VFR minimums under § 91.155, wind sensitivity, sea/lake breezes, volcanic ash, hurricanes, the four-corner go/no-go check.