Flying Your Drone Safely in the Winter & Inclement Weather – Smart Construction Dashboard

Flying in the winter

Keeping your hardware functioning and your data high-quality takes a few extra steps in the winter months. We'll outline the considerations to take into account as you continue to survey your site and process your data in a colder season.

Battery care

The first thing that colder weather affects during a flight is your battery. Low temperatures reduce its performance and shorten battery life by as much as half. This means you might need to keep more spares than usual and plan to do more battery swaps than you typically do. Also, don’t leave your drone or its batteries outside when they aren’t in use.

In cold environments, insert the battery into the battery compartment and turn on the drone for about 1-2 minutes to warm up before starting the mission.

If you’re working in especially frigid conditions, it is especially important to keep your batteries warm.

One way to keep them warm is to set your batteries on your vehicle's dashboard with the window defrost set to high. To get double-heating action, point your vehicle facing the sun so the batteries on the dash get two different heat sources.

Drone performance and operation

Drones should not be flown in temperatures below freezing (32ºF/0ºC).

Avoid contact with snow. Moisture can damage the motors. Using a landing pad for taking off and landing your drone is recommended.

A winter-friendly drone should be able to handle cold temperatures and high humidity. It should also be equipped with high-vis lights on the body of the craft so you can spot it in the sky even with reduced visibility.

Mission Settings

You will need to adjust your mission settings to accommodate winter conditions. You should always have shutter priority mode toggled on. This fixes the shutter speed at the value you choose.

Sunny skies

Shutter Speed 1/800
White Balance: Sunny

Overcast or grey skies

Shutter Speed 1/640
White Balance: Sunny or Cloudy, depending on the current brightness.

You may need to slow the drone's speed down 1–2m/s to reduce motion blur.

Always aim to fly when the sun is directly overhead (except over reflective surfaces), as this will reduce the chance that shadows will affect the terrain model that is produced.

Monitor your ISO as you fly to ensure it is within the recommended range of 100–400.

Seasonal changes in daylight

Your regular working hours might extend into complete darkness, depending on your latitude.

FAA regulations prohibit the flight of drones after sunset, so plan your surveys to occur during daylight hours—whenever those may be for your area. This could mean doing things much earlier than your normal routine.

Wind

If it is windy on the ground, it will be even windier where your drone is flying. We recommend checking the weather one day in advance before you fly.

You can check weather forecasts at UAV Forecast, which allows you to calculate wind speeds at the altitude you'll be flying. UAV Forecast also has a mobile app for Android and iOS that can be used in the field.

If you must fly in windy conditions, follow this advice:

Fly perpendicular to the wind. If you can't fly perpendicular to the wind, fly upwind first, then downwind, back toward you.
Change the home point location to where the mission will end.
Fly early in the day. It tends to be less windy in the morning.

In addition to wind turbulence, please note that the thinner air will decrease the drone's battery life if you are flying at a higher altitude.

Precipitation

Avoid strong wind, rain, and snow. Flying in fog is not a good idea. Fog can trigger the drone’s obstacle avoidance sensors, making it think there’s something in front of it and stopping the flight mid-mission.

Weather watching and navigation

Check the forecast diligently and schedule your surveys around good conditions as best as possible.

Precipitation or heavy cloud cover may also disrupt the GPS signal, resulting in poor data quality.

**It is important to keep them charged, though this may be difficult as the days shorten or at latitudes above or below 50º. Charge them as much as you are able.