Hi
there everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. My guest on this show is Lisa Berzella. She is a meteorologist out of Salt Lake and an expert obviously in weather, but has also been flying since the very beginning days, who hang gliders in the late 80s, made the U.S. Worlds team a couple times, raced with Kari Castle and Linda Simone, and has some great stories with that history. And then she transitioned here about 18 years ago, 20 years ago, to paragliders. We talked about that transition, what that was like coming from the good old days and still chasing it really hard. Fascinating, inspiring person and fantastic pilot, and I've been following her for a long time because she's got so much great weather knowledge, and I reached out to her because I really have been wanting to do a show on XCSkies, kind of the a disease of that whole whole program.
I know it's used widely around the world. It's probably a little more popular here in North America, but Alex Roby talked about it. And it's along the lines of kind of a medio parapente where it takes data from all the different models, NAMM 312, GFS, HRR3, and others, and puts it all into a visual platform that we can use to create much better our soaring forecasts and also be able to forecast way out in the distance, certainly with the GFS model. So I have been trying to get Chris Galley to do this for ages and that wasn't happening. It's Chris Galley's platform; he's the genius that created it all and made all of our lives much, much easier and so, but Lisa's a total expert on it and her background in meteorology just
lined up to make this happen, so thankfully she was willing to do this. It's fantastic; I learned a ton. She talks about the kind of five most important tools within XCSkies that she uses and why, and then she also takes us also through her weather flow. The XCSkies is not where she starts; she starts with an upper air analysis, and then she takes us to the National Weather Service, and within that gives us various places to dive into, you know, the forecast discussion, I think is something that most of us use, but she also spends some time with radar and satellite and the surface charts and the soaring forecast, depending on where you live. So a fantastic resource. We got into her history and safety and her racing and everything.
It was just fascinating. Great talk. And this one's actually in two parts. parts. So the first part is our typical kind of audio podcast. And then we switch over and she does a screen share of her XCSkies. And that's quite long because it's very in-depth; kind of starts at the very top and goes down through what everything is and all the tools you can use there and things I'm sure you probably didn't even know about. So once we get to the end of the audio podcast, you'll switch over to that video podcast. I'll put it up on Vimeo and YouTube. All the links for that will be in the show notes, and yeah, without further delay, uh, hope you're all having fun getting it back into the sky and uh, sending it, and this will help you do so. So, enjoy this talk with Lisa Rozella.
lisa
This is really quite a treat for me to get you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge, and I'm really excited to have you explain XCSkies to all of us lesser skilled, those of us who don't know weather as well. So I think that's going to be really fun, but it would be amiss of us to just dive right into that without hearing a little bit about you and your amazing history. And I thought maybe a place we'd start is if you're at a party and someone asks you what you do and who you are, how do you respond to that? How do you answer that? that?
Depends what kind of a party it is. Who invited me? If it's a flying buddy, I'll, you know, I'll definitely maybe mention that I'm involved in weather, maybe mention the meteorology. You know, if it's one of my outdoors buddies, then I might mention my musician side or just, just traveling, fun love inside. But I think the meteorology part has played a much bigger role in my life in the past 10 years. So I'd probably run with that.
And expand on that a little bit. What kind of meteorology are you doing? This is your work, this is your career, correct?
Yeah. So I had been a musician for most of my life, And uh, 9-11 kind of put a real damper on the whole scene there. So actually, since I had already been a pilot for about 15 years, I went back to school and got a meteorology degree in the early 2000s and um, got a job for a little while working as a hydrologist and then got back into the weather service, uh, where I had done a student internship, um, and became an intermediate neurologist for the the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City. Then, uh, so I worked as a meteorologist for about five, six years and another position, um, kind of tacked on to that was, uh, kind of ahead of a surface observations program, uh, which allowed me to do meteorology still, but then I could get out in the field and, uh, travel, basically travel the whole state.
So that's kind of what I do now. I do a little bit of the in-office forecasting, and then I get to get out on the road.
And are you – we just did this kind of weather series, and the last one was with Gavin Morris, who's a meteorologist and weatherman for Channel 9 in Sydney. And, you know, he has access to the whole supercomputer thing, as Hansa does. Is that what you're looking at? And is that what you're using to model? And do you have access to all the speedy, fast, massive data?
We do. We do. It's pretty special. And the thing that we have access to at work, which I don't at home or on the internet, is the European model, which is fantastic for kind of mid to long range. range um you know and then you can plan stuff and as you get closer then hone in on the more um the tighter um smaller range models the
higher res stuff
exactly yeah uh
So you said early 2000s, and you were flying. Were you in Salt Lake because of the point? Were you there because of the flying, um?
I moved to Salt Lake in the mid 90s for both flying and for my music career at the time and
What I gotta ask you about your music, what's the—what's the music side of it?
Um, so I'm a classical trumpet player. Oh, wow, yeah, jazz? Uh, classical, actually. Okay.
Just okay, I thought... I thought when you were classical, you do the jazz too? But okay, wow, cool.
I do, I do play some jazz, but I have, um, actually my partner is a jazz player, and so I would never assume to be called a jazz player. Um, I do get to play in a big band; we play in Salt Lake in the summers, which is super fun. Um, but I moved out here to play with the ballet and the symphony. Um, and because I already had a great flying crew from the point and, um, from some competitions, I knew some folks out here. And so it was just kind of a perfect blend to come out to Salt Lake.
And so you were, you went out there, you were hanging hang gliding back then, correct?
Yes. And
Are you still hang gliding, um?
You know, I haven't flown much in the past few years. I sold my competition wing about three years ago, and I have an older like Super Sport that I would play around at the point, but I'm getting less and less comfortable on an older piece of equipment, so I've decided to kind of lay it aside. I don't think I flew last year, and I haven't flown yet this year, so I hope to get back into it when I have some more time and get a, you know, a newer model, a newer glider, so I'm a little more comfortable on it. Did
you compete for a while, yeah.
I started competing, I think about three or four years after I started flying, so maybe in the early 90s, uh, and I competed through about 2014. Oh,
Wow, so recently did
A couple years on the U.S. women's world team, uh, they went to Hungary in '98 and, um, Italy in 2008, which was really fun. Oh,
Cool, and you're—you're now you're flying paragliders, yeah?
I actually started flying in '98 and, uh, so I just would, would play around with it at the point and then ease into, you know, a couple of the mountain sites where that I was super familiar with on a hangy, um, and just kind of did it as a side thing. Um, but hang gliding, especially the landings, they just require a lot of practice and a lot of focus. So I never felt like I had time to do, you know, I kind of had to choose one or the other. And that was definitely in, in hang gliding mode at the time. So, so that was really my focus, um, until I started. So basically, I sold my comp wing and then I just kind of threw myself and more into paragliding and trying to fly again the same sites that I flew on my hang glider, so I was familiar with them and by now I knew the weather a lot more intensively, so I could really kind of pick and choose the days that I knew they're going to be light winds and kind of the lowest risk factors for me, so
I'm reading this book, "Eagles in the Flesh." You read read that by Eric K. Oh?
I used to fly with Eric, yes, the
stories in this book, I
came in like right when those stories, when the crazy years were waning, uh, Jim
gangrene and
Oh my gosh, uh, Jim Zeiss was the leader of the team and, um, I think I flew with those guys in Tennessee in '93, and they kind of took me under their wing and I had all kinds of equipment problems. I would go to Jay-Z and he would fix my radios and everything, and so I got to know the guys and it was, it was a pretty incredible era, yeah.
It just sounded—this isn't the right term, but it just sounded so cowboy, it just sounded so cowgirl, and you're in your... but I mean, it was just wild. People with these guys were—this, the whole gang was doing is just crazy. It sounded so absurd, it...
was and you know there There were a couple of microcosm areas like that, like at Elsinore, the A-Team, and places like that. But it definitely wasn't representative of the community as a whole.
Yeah.
That's probably a good thing. Yeah.
How was that transition going from hang gliding to paragliding?
Well, you know, it was great. The biggest transition was when I took lessons with Ken Hood and Jorgensen at the time in Salt Lake. So I'd been flying my hang glider for almost 10 years, and he started me off maybe halfway up the hill. And then within the first day, I was going off the top of the south side at the point of the mountain. And I thought, this is crazy, Ken. Don't advance me just because I'm a hang glider pilot. He said, no, no, this is what we do with everybody. buddy
and it
Took me months to get up there with a hang glider, you know, like probably. So I just recognized how advanced it was, and then I noticed that it seemed because of the ease of paragliding that people got into it a lot quicker and got into the mechanics and didn't spend as much time out there observing the weather, observing everything that happened around them, because it was just so much quicker to get into paragliding.
Yeah, I imagine that's – and gosh, it seems like it's even another big jump when you talk about speed flying, you know, that they're even easier to fly and maybe you spend even less time learning about all that. How much has your love and kind of passion for meteorology, how much has that impacted your flying?
Well, that's – It's a pretty general
question, isn't it? Yeah, I
get that question a lot. I'd say the biggest impact it had for me was learning the big picture. Because back in the day when we would look for weather, especially when I got into like in the mid 90s, I was shooting for 100 mile flights. And by the 2000s, I was looking for 200 mile flights. And so you'd look, obviously, try to get the forecast for a huge area, and and again, your forecast would be like stuff that you live or die by. But it as uh just a pilot, I was really focused on like looking at the answers, like trying to find, okay, what are the winds and what are the what are the outcomes? Is it going to rain? Um, surface winds?
Like, I didn't have a lot of tools at my access. But the biggest thing was that I wasn't looking at the big picture, like the weather systems and what's happening, you know, upstream. And learning about all that stuff in school and on the job has given me a different perspective, which has, I think, increased, you know, the possibilities for me with cross country, but essentially has helped me to lower or my risk in flying. I think I like to think,
you know, I've been working on the book from the show, the first hundred shows. And so I've gone back through all of them. And we took a lot of time on Hans's because he was talking about, you know, that you have these incredibly powerful, and actually Gavin Morris was just talking about this in a show that we just released last week, that you have these incredible supercomputers and you have this, you know, long, you know, know pretty decent amount of historical data now, and you can see it in all these different resolutions with the different models; and yet, where we're operating is still so much micro being influenced by the morning sun and the afternoon sun and thermals and valley winds, and all this stuff that can it to some extent is picked up by the models, but a lot of it really isn't.
That so you're still, they were both just talking about that, they're still pretty regularly surprised, sure.
Yeah, um, and really, there's no substitute for locals' knowledge. Like, it's almost crazy these days to go to a new site and not connect with the locals, at least you know to get at the beta, because that micro terrain and meteorology just from hill to hill is so different and so important. But you can make, you can make interpolations with a given forecast that if you flown a site long enough. I've been flying the Wasatch now for 20 years, so been able to make a few interpolations with what I see on the map and what I'm going to get. And then you, and then then you give it all up and you just go fly and just don't know what you're going to get for sure.
Yeah. When we're, when I'm out, I've been training in the last couple of years out in Santa Barbara in March for the, for the race, which I, cause you know, it's, you can get a lot more hours out there than you can in Sun Valley in March. And all the locals always have to have this thing, you know, got to go to know. And do you, do you think, which I love, you know, you got to just go out there and put your finger into the wind and see if it, if it's close to what you think it's going to be. And if it's, you know, maybe doable when you thought it wasn't. Do you think your, all your knowledge with meteorology gets you in the air more or less? I
think it definitely allows me to actually get more air time. Uh, I may be going out there less because I'm actually working a 40 hour a week job, which, you know, uh, a lot of us didn't do in the beginning years for many years, but yeah, Yeah, I definitely feel like I look, I can kind of tell, plus flying for so long in the Wasatch, you kind of know the good days versus the not so good days.
And since my time is limited, as I'm sure you understand having a kid, you want to be a little more choosy, not just if you can get off the ground, but maybe if you can have a 50k flight or greater. And then it also depends on, you know, who your flying buddies are. If you don't have a driver, you don't have anybody to fly with; that might influence things too. But especially like in the spring, those—the windows are kind of narrow with these windy conditions like we're seeing today. So we got great tools like XCSkies and the stuff I have at work where you can look ahead and kind of get an idea, and then as you get closer, you can hone in on it. So I'd say, yeah, for sure, it's maybe getting me less time out in the field, but more results in the air.
Great.
And we're going to get into your weather flow, and this is going to be super fun to work through XCSkies and just how you tackle finding those really good days. And we're going to do that as a as a video portion of this talk, but before we get to there, just a few questions more. I just want to learn more about your history. How has flying changed your life?
Wow, um, well, I think like most obsessed pilots, flying kind of becomes your life. Uh, and then when you take on other responsibilities, like going back to school, adding a second career, then you have to start juggling, you know, adding a kid, which I have cats, I don't have a kid, but there's things that, uh, that kind of make you start to get, get picky. But I'd still say in, in my mind, uh, flying is, is a very, very big component of my life, of who I am, um, and of the passion and the things I enjoy take
me through the arc as I... I've been thinking about this a lot lately, you know? I just turned 48, I'll be 49 if I do the X-Ops again, if I'm silly enough to do that again. And when that race was next year, you said, you know, you were... were chasing 100 milers in the 90s, early 2000s, you were chasing 200 milers. What gets you excited now? Is it still... are you still trying to chase big distance, or is it time in the sky? How does... how can you prepare me for you?
know, it's kind of like when I made the transition from skiing to of snowboarding. It's a new way to enjoy the same medium. You know, even though I've technically been doing it 22 years on the paraglider now, you know, I've just gotten into recently in the last couple of years trying to fly the lines that I did on my hangy. But it's a new ballgame because you need different parameters. You know, you have different folks you're flying with, You have different weather models; it's, it's very different. And gosh, every single time you fly, even the same site on what you think are similar conditions, it's always like way freaking different. So it's just exciting for me. I haven't done it for so many years and so long that I can't go back and go to Junction and try and fly the same route.
You know, I actually tried, uh, for the hundred mile or at this site in Utah that we have Junction for for 20 years, and I never got the 100 mile on my hang glider. I just got it last summer on my paraglider. Nice. So stoked. Wow.
and junction that you're flying out over the swell, correct? Um...
You're actually just to the west of the swell. If you, if you headed it, basically you'll go to Junction if it's a south day and you want to either head, head up towards Salt Lake or go toward Price. I kind of went in that direction the other day. Yeah, the swell is more for westerly sites. But again, it's like you can just fly the same site over and over. And on a paraglider especially, I just feel like I'm feeling the air so much more, which is a good thing and a bad thing.
So it's just different. It really changes things up. up, and a lot more landing options are available to me on a paraglider, especially if I keep my winds low, than on a hang glider. And so, it's maybe a little more touchy in the air, but it's definitely my heart rate once I get through those, you know, 800 foot per minute sharp edge thermals, and I keep my wing over my head, the rest is cake. My heart rate comes down, and because I know I can land in a lot more places than with a hang glider, what
Do you miss about hang gliding, oh?
Well, I miss the community I had there. Was a really good group of folks, but uh, I also miss, um, the conditions like definitely had when we were going for the 200. You know, you'd have a certain wind, uh, threshold and thermal intensity, and the prefrontal days—we actually looked forward to prefrontal days. And even the monsoonal days, we knew kind of where it was going to overdevelop just from experience. And I was really lucky to get in with a group of very experienced cross country hang glider pilots. It was, I think, maybe at the end of the heyday of cross country hang gliding here in Salt Lake, like in the 80s and early 90s was huge.
So I was really fortunate to come when I did and just kind of catch the tail end of it, and I just got so much information from these guys, but we would definitely fly in bigger stuff and and it was fun, and I'm glad I got that out of the way when I was young is
It because you can fly because your air speeds are so much higher. I'm assuming you can fly in stronger conditions. I'm not assuming, I know that. Yeah. Does that mean it's also scarier or is just the wing takes, gives you that buffer? And, and in other words, are you, were you more scared hang gliding or are you more scared? Cause you've got 22 years paragliding too. So you've got a pretty good sample of both. yeah
That's a, that's a good question. Um, I'd say in the air, you know, I most of my friends have tumbled at least once. I, I was fortunate enough to knock on something and not have tumbled. I know Kari Castle has tumbled twice, so there's, there's definitely always that element in the back of your mind. But then you tell yourself, "Oh, I've got a parachute, you know, just in case, I'll hold on to the bar." Whatever, I'd say the biggest unknown with hang gliding was, was the landing field, because you knew it was going to be tough if you got out in a big field and you had a lot of wind. Then it was usually pretty laminar, not a problem. But if there was a lot of turbulence around, you know, that was the game on for sure.
And in a paraglider, you know, the biggest challenge and heart rate riser for me is definitely the turbulent conditions while I'm in the air. But again, it's like the SIV clinics, having the shoot on you and easing into it in the springtime, especially like right now, it just helps me a lot. So, so there's differences in both sports and there's definitely high intensity in different areas. Would
you change anything if you could go back and rewrite history to an extent?
Well, that's a great question. You know, I just feel so fortunate to have had all the experiences I have. So where I am right now is a result of all of those experiences. And I'm really happy where I am right now. So I'd say no.
You mentioned your partner, your musical partner. Does he also fly?
He doesn't. He has flown tandem. I've gotten a tandem flight. So he knows kind of what it feels like to just be briefly up in the air. I think it was at the point in the mountain. But he has driven, chase driven for me a couple of times. Nice. And even just driving up to some of the local sites when I wasn't planning on going anywhere. And he'd say, okay. I said, just, you know, come up, drop me off, drive back down, go do your thing. You know, I know where the car is. Everything will be fine. And he would just sit up there for hours watching me. It was so fascinating. It's great. And he really likes to do that. So I hope to have him on chase a couple times more this summer.
Any close calls in your long career?
Yeah, I'd say some of the landings at the competitions. You know, you always tend to push yourself, push your limits a little more at the meets. I'd say, and it was a learning process because, you know, you always test yourself and your limits and your risk factors in the beginning. and then you get to know yourself and the risks a little better. And then you can decide if you want to take them. So I think I've had some hard landings over the years. I'd say some repeated landings that led to needing a shoulder surgery. And then of course, some carnage on the glider, on landing, things like that.
But fortunately, you know, I haven't bashed myself up enough on landings that, uh, I never really had any, um, you know, hospitalizations. I think I dislocated a pinky once on landing and had to go to the hospital. Of course, it's—I was running and I fell That became very common. That hardly counts. That hardly
counts yeah
Yeah, we have to say that, though.
So I've
been pretty lucky with that. I'd say, you know, most of the dark side moves that we make that we fool ourselves with getting away with, I've been able to get away with. And I've been fortunate to be around a community of people so we could talk about these things. And I started to realize more and more what I was getting away with. And I think that helped me. Yeah, I'm still susceptible to it, like we all are. But I think it helped me stay a little more away from the dark side. And now my biggest concerns are really just keeping the wing over my head and always making sure I have a glide out on that paraglider. I just assume a one-to-one glide. That helps me. That
does. Do you have any other kind of advice for those listening who want to have a life of flight and not get all banged up? Are there any kind of rituals you have or best practices, things you've learned over the years that this is how I do it, this is how I approach flying and that keeps me safe? Because that's a pretty good record you've had.
Yeah, I have been lucky. I'd say the two biggest things that have helped me are learning the weather, because that's a huge risk factor that's out there. One that, you know, you can kind of control yourself and your equipment, but the weather you can't control, you can just try to divine. So that's been a big thing for me. And the other one is, is the community, the people that you fly with. And we have a really fantastic community here in Salt Lake and across Utah, and several—there's a Central Utah has a great club as well. So, you know, but you have to pick your crew. If you're, if you're a newbie, you know, you really want to recognize that and go with the crew that's going to ease you into this stuff, and not jump in with the folks that are trying for the 100 and 200k flights.
Really need to ease into this stuff. And so, I think a lot of folks have been doing that. Um, I just really want to encourage all the female pilots out there to really just get out and do it, because I want to fly with more awesome amen.
Yes, absolutely! Yes, please. Yes, please. Well, that's a good transition, so those of you you listening, we're kind of doing this audio slash video. We're going to switch over here to video, and Lisa's going to record her screen and take us through XCSkies, kind of the a to z of XCSkies, and how she identifies good days, and what she uses, what's important, maybe what isn't, and we will learn this in from the visual platform, which we don't often do. So, here we go, we'll switch over if
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