Lots of interesting weather on the way to Alicante today. Here's a picture of one of the many towering Cumulonimbus (Cb) clouds we encountered over central France (around Lyon and Toulouse). We were flying at FL380 and had to change course to avoid flying through the cloud. This basically means asking ATC for a heading change to come off the airway we were flying on, so that we could fly around the weather. By making the decision early you can limit the extra track miles needed and limit the heading change needed. We did hear one aircraft requesting a 60 degree offset, by 15-20 degrees was more common. Given the weather, I had lots of practice in using the onboard Weather Radar to identify upcoming clouds from about 100nm away.
