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.