Good morning, Northern Michigan. This is Mike, and
this is Cup of Traverse City for the
12/24/2025,
and Merry Christmas Eve.
And since I'm taking tomorrow off, Merry Christmas
as well.
And today, I wanna go, into the weather
first here. So, today, cloudy, high near 37,
northwest wind around five, becoming south in the
afternoon.
Tonight, mostly cloudy with a low around 29.
South wind,
five miles per hour becoming north after midnight.
And tomorrow, Christmas day,
mostly cloudy with a steady temperature around 32.
North wind around 10 becoming east in the
afternoon.
Tomorrow night, chance of snow showers after 1AM,
mixing with freezing rain after 4AM.
Yeesh.
And cloudy with a low around 23.
Southwest winds,
five to 10 miles an hour,
and gusts as high as 25.
Precipitation
percentage, about 40%.
Friday, snow showers, freezing rain,
mostly before 1AM.
Yeah. That's gonna be fun.
Anyway,
so, yeah, I figured I'd cover the weather
for the next couple of days. Actually, I'm
taking,
Thursday, Friday, and the weekend off, so,
I'll
return on Monday.
But, today, I wanted to do some,
aviation
humor around this time of year.
I know.
It's it's it's my own thing, but
the FAA
or, actually, more accurately, ForeFlight, which is a
a tool that pilots use
to check weather, do flight planning, all that
stuff.
Insert some pretty funny things into the terminal
area forecast
or the
METAR,
which is the,
now I can't remember what the what the
acronym is, but it's, you know, basically the
weather for the next hour at a particular
airport or reporting station.
And,
I was just looking at, today's,
current
METAR.
And, basically, it's marginal VFR,
winds three sixty at eight knots
and
six miles plus visibility,
overcast at 2,500
feet.
And,
the the there's a warning on here. Red
reindeer nose use prohibited
on all taxiways,
and that's for that's for Traverse City
right now. But there's a lot of them
that, I've seen over the last
little bit, you know, looking around different airports.
One is Santa activity in vicinity of the
airport,
festive weather.
Let's see. Possible smoke, chestnuts roasting.
There's a couple others.
Let's see. Caution, Grinch activity
in the vicinity of the airport in
magic rain door reindeer
dust
in the vicinity of the airport.
Cole in vicinity of Noddy.
So, you know, they have a pretty pretty
good,
sense of humor and, you know, festive little
messages,
on the,
on the terminal area forecast and the METARs
and, you know, I guess that's a
joke. Now
one more, thing.
Most pilots have to do what's called a
biannual
flight review,
and you don't have to do it with
an FAA inspector. You have to do it
with a an instructor.
But,
you know, they call
it a mini checkride, I guess.
Checkride is where you're going for another license,
like, you know, if you're going for your
private pilot's license, you have to take a
checkride with a FAA
authorized examiner and
blah blah blah blah. It's called a, you
know, a practical test,
but called a check ride. So we just
sort of call these check rides. So
here here's one.
Santa was up for his check ride,
and the FAA examiner arrives to perform Santa's
annual flight review.
It should be biannual, but, and it doesn't
have to be FAA. But, hey, this is
a joke.
And after checking the sleigh and the reindeer's
weight and balance, the examiner claims in the
sleigh with a shotgun.
And, Santa looks at her, so why why
is the, you know, why do you have
a shotgun? He says, well, I'm not supposed
to tell you this, but you're gonna lose
an engine on takeoff.
I thought that was pretty funny.
And,
also, the the FAA
will,
put up
ADS B data for Santa's sleigh.
So if you're using a flight tracker like
flight radar 24,
ADSB exchange,
there'll be an entry in there where you
can follow Santa's sleigh.
So
like I said, the FAA and,
you know, ForeFlight and some of the other
apps do a lot of fun stuff around,
you know, around
Christmas. I don't think they do it around
other holidays. I know,
locally
here, when they have fireworks going on, they'll
put a little note in the METAR
or the ATIS. ATIS is, you know, where
pilots
listen to the hourly weather on
a, you know, a looped
thing, you know, think of it like the,
NWS weather channels,
and the weather radio radio. Well, there's a
similar thing for for pilots,
comes from
the local control tower or
whatever, and
sometimes they'll put something in there about, you
know, hey, fireworks,
four miles north northeast
of the airport or whatever, something like that,
around the fourth of July or whenever they
have a fireworks show. I know around here,
the Cherry Festival usually does one at the
end as well. So but that normally coincides
with fourth of July or pretty close.
So, anyway, I guess we're going a little
long. That's okay.
I hope you enjoyed
listening to a little bit of aviation humor,
and I will catch you on Monday. Everybody
have a merry Christmas,
a happy holiday, whatever you, celebrate or don't.
If if you don't,
happy Thursday tomorrow.
Anyway,
catch you,
on Monday.