Severe Turblance Over Wyoming, What Caused It?

Just a word of caution. If you are on an airplane and the captain turns off the seatbelt sign, keep your seatbelt on. The captain will even advise that you do so.

Turblance can hit without warning.

An evening flight over Wyoming on Wednesday experienced more than just a few bumps.

Delta flight DL56 from Salt Lake City, destined for Amsterdam, diverted to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after the flight “encountered significant turbulence,” Delta said in a statement.

It was an Airbus A330-900 carrying 275 passengers and 13 crew.

The plane diverted to Minneapolis Airport for an early stop, where 25 people on board were taken to local hospitals for treatment and evaluation.

The flight had just passed over Interstate 90, just west of Rawlins.

They were over the top of some heavy thunderstorms.

That's when they ran through some heavy turbulence.

The aircraft rose about 500 feet, then dropped over 1500 feet with some jolts after.

That little red circle in the image below shows where the turbulence happened.

Thunderstorms cause winds to surge up and down from the middle of the storms to the edges.

Planes usually climb higher to avoid this, but it can still be bumpy.

Sevear storms can cause unusually powerful rising and falling winds.

Despite what some news outlets have published, the numbers show that there are not any more incidents of severe turbulence today than in past years. It just happens now and then.

Flying is the safest means of travel in the world. But even the safest way to travel has its occasional problems.

Bad weather below, especially over a mountain area, can still cause a problem for planes as high as 40 plus thousand feet.