Before you depart on a flight into potential icing conditions, you should be familiar with the current and forecast weather along your route. You should build a flight plan that will minimize the risk that you will have a serious icing encounter by utilizing alternate routes and altitudes. Plan how you would exit from icing at any point along your route. This exit strategy normally will entail climbing or descending to warmer and/or dryer air or diverting around an area of cumulus icing activity.

You should always obtain a standard weather briefing. You can obtain extensive additional weather information from a variety of commercial and government sources (check the resources section on the main site page ). However, you may have limited time to study the weather. In this section, we will discuss how to efficiently obtain the weather information that you need to plan your flight.