The snow had stopped but the clouds and winds conspired to keep me on the ground today. We spent my lesson in the classroom going over stalls.
When a non-pilot thinks “stall” they think of something like a car stalling, where the engine stops. That is not what a pilot refers to when they talk about stalls. A stall in aviation is where the wing of the plane cannot generate enough lift to maintain flight — the angle of attack of the wing is too great to keep a smooth airflow over the surface of the wing. The disrupted airflow spoils the lift and the wing stalls, causing the plane to pitch down or to the side.
My instructor taught me about the warning signs pointing to an impending stall and how to recover from one. A stall can be a very serious event (one of the leading killers of pilots when it occurs at low altitude), so this was one somber lesson I really took to heart.