Scud Running

In general aviation, scud running is a practice in which pilots lower their altitude to avoid clouds or Instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The goal of scud running is to stay clear of weather to continue flying with visual, rather than instrument, references. This practice is widely accepted to be dangerous, and has led to death in many cases from pilots flying into radio towers and high tension wires; however, even instrument-rated pilots sometimes elect to take the risk to avoid icing or embedded thunderstorms in cloud, or in situations where the minimum instrument altitudes are too high for their aircraft.

Scud running is occasionally referred to as "maintaining visual contact with the ground while avoiding physical contact with it" or "if the weather's too bad to go IFR, we'll go VFR." A procedure under instrument flight rules (IFR), called a contact approach, is often referred to as a form of "legalized" scud running.

The term gets its name from scud, which is used to describe small, ragged, low cloud fragments that are unattached to a larger cloud base, and often seen with and behind cold fronts and thunderstorm gust fronts.