Plane Passenger Not Prepared for Weather Change 20 Minutes Apart

Images from a plane showing dramatic changes in weather on a short trip in Brazil have gone viral on Reddit.

The striking images were captured by Paulo Alberto, a 41-year-old psychologist, photographer and entrepreneur from Paulínia, a small town in the Brazilian state of São Paulo.

Alberto told Newsweek that the images were taken just over a week ago during a flight with Azul Linhas Aéreas, the Brazilian airline, while flying over Foz do Iguaçu, the city bordering the Iguaçu Falls, one of the world’s largest waterfall systems.

In a recent post on Reddit under the username Level-Impact-757, Alberto shared a composite image created with some of the differing scenes from the flight. The title of the post, which has 31,800 upvotes since it was shared a week ago, says: “Two days ago I took these pictures in the same 1 hour flight.”

He told Newsweek that the photos were taken about 20 minutes apart during the flight from Viracopos Airport in the Campinas municipality of São Paulo to Foz do Iguaçu International Airport.

The picture in the Reddit post featured a range of shots, from vibrant sunset evening skies to stormy, smoke-like cloud cover. Additional images that Alberto shared with Newsweek further highlighted the changing color of the skies during the flight, from fiery orange and grey to dark purple and blue.

“We took off at 6:30 pm in cold weather and moderate winds and found ourselves halfway in hot and rainy weather,” he said. “Within minutes, clouds took over the plane’s surroundings with lots of lightning.”

The plane was surrounded by the clouds and “suddenly everything goes dark outside the window,” the Redditor said.

How Risky Is Flying in Stormy Weather?

Generally, planes can handle “significant amounts of rain” without any issues, according to the Pilot Institute, an aviation training provider accredited by the InternationalAccreditors for Continuing Education and Training (IACET). The institute is also a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety team industry member.

Heavy rain will only be a problem when visibility is reduced near the runway or “unique weather phenomena” is present, causing rain droplets to freeze to the aircraft.

If the rainfall is heavy enough, forward visibility may drop below the required level for safe operation close to and on the ground. The condition is usually short-lived and rare and only associated with thunderstorms, the Pilot Institute said.

In an advisory dated February 2013, the FAA said that visibility is typically “near zero within a thunderstorm cloud” and “hazards are increased when associated with the other thunderstorm hazards of turbulence, hail, and lightning that make precision instrument flying virtually impossible.”

Pressure usually falls rapidly with the approach of a thunderstorm. It later rises sharply with the first gust of the storm and the arrival of the cold downdraft and heavy rain before going back to normal as the thunderstorm passes. “This cycle of pressure change may occur in 15 minutes,” the FAA said.

While serious accidents due to lightning strikes are “extremely rare,” the FAA said, lightning can “puncture the skin of an aircraft and can damage communications and electronic navigational equipment,” while nearby lightning can blind the pilot, leaving the pilot momentarily unable to navigate the plane.

‘Very Impressive!’

In later comments shared in the post, Alberto said, “there was a heavy change of weather from cold to hot and rainy” and “I was in awe watching all these scenarios in so short time.”

Alberto told Newsweek that he spent 10 years with “the trauma of flying.” He discovered that he was “terrified of flying” during his first commercial flight between Brazil and the U.S. and swore he’d “never get on a plane again.”

After deciding to face his fear and go to therapy, in 2019 he took his first flight after 2012 and continued flying.

“Between 2020 and today I have taken more than 50 flights and I always try to go to the window to spend almost the entire flight enjoying all the landscapes we encounter,” Alberto said.

Reddit users were blown away by the images in the latest post.

User Hurlbag said: “These are really beautiful, i’m especially impressed with the bottom two. Good eye.”

UpwardNotForward wrote “Very impressive!” and illusionmist said “Gorgeous…”

JaM– noted: “Amazing photos. Lucky you had a clean window!!”

User -SpecialGuest- said: “Thats so cool! The pictures are so clear and nice vertically arranged. Weather is wild!”

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