On July 6th of 2024, we had a full day of tandems and experienced jumpers. It was a busy day, the plane only shut down to fuel every other load. As we approached sunset, we were watching a thunderstorm that was coming our way. When we took off for the last load the thunderstorm was a little over 20 miles to the southwest. The weather at our airport was still clear blue skies.

After take off I did my normal climb pattern to the north of the airport. During our 20 min climb, I was watching the thunderstorm starting to accelerate in our direction. I managed to get the jumpers away while the weather was still good. However, by the time that I had descended into the traffic pattern the thunderstorm was only a couple miles south.

My first attempt at landing was to the south. This is direction I had been landing all day. Since this was a private airport, there was no weather reporting system. So I had no information on what the wind was doing. As I entered ground effect, I was way too fast and getting blown off center line. Before I knew it I was half way down the runway. This is when I imitated a go-around.

My second attempt, I was knew that landing to the south resulted in a large tail wind. So I decided to try to land to the north. As I entered ground effect, it was such a strong crosswind that I couldn’t keep the plane aligned with our narrow runway. Afterwards, I learned that it was a 30 knot crosswind. Climbing out from my second go-around a few things went through my head. First, I don’t have much fuel on board. Second, my intuition was telling me that trying again would only increase my chance of something going wrong.

I didn’t want to force it, or worse run my fuel so low that I couldn’t divert. I decided to divert to Rockdale, 15 miles to the north. Since the storm was to the south Rockdale was my only option. I landed uneventfully in Rockdale, waited out the storm and returned home.