Originally Posted by P-3Bubba

I was over Egypt last week and entered a thunderstorm b/c ATC couldn’t post a vector clearance. The weather office had briefed NO icing and isolated thunderstorms. It wasn’t long before we were accumulating ice and getting bumped around. Our radios began to squeal b/c the VHF antenna is in the wind stream and also accumulates ice, which then prevents you from talking with ATC all the while you're still in the thunderstorm.

Then, the airspeed started to bleed off, our icing systems were working fine, so we must have been seeing some bizarre winds maybe some wind shear. I set our maximum power and we were only making about 180kts. We had been cruising at 250kts prior to reducing speed for turbulence and now I’m barely making 180kts at max power. I felt that knot tighten in my gut, but just about the time I was thinking about making my own vectors we cleared out the storm. We don’t have a weather radar, and the radar we have is very limited in detecting strong storms. Looking back at the clouds we had just exited they were large, high and had the text book anvil shape. We were at 24,000 and these were stretching very high above us. I’ve been in T-Storms before but not like that.