EC135
Flight Crew Commercial
Situational Awareness
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Object; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
General None Reported / Taken
Human Factors; Weather
While returning to base; myself and my crew ran into un-forecast weather. Flying through a mountain valley; we could see lights 3-4 SM away through our night vision goggles. We could tell the ceiling was dropping slowly; but the [local] airport was showing overcast clouds at 2;400 feet and 10 SM visibility. While straight and level; the lights that we could see clearly disappeared and I could no longer make out the mountain ridge line. I elected to make a precautionary landing in a farmer's field directly below us. Upon turning on the landing light; I could see that it had started raining which was the reason visibility had decreased rapidly. During our recon we identified an electric pole and what we thought were the wires running off of them. Due to no illumination; we could not see two thin wires running across our LZ. On approach; the underside of the Fenestrom tail rotor made contact with a wire and damaged it. [Neither] myself nor the crew were hurt during the incident. I am new to flying in the mountains; particularly at night. Although I thought we had cleared the field of wires; my hastiness to get the aircraft on the ground caused me to miss the wires in our landing path. However; I also believe had I continued flying we would have gone IMC. I believe landing was the right thing to do and the training/ procedures taught to me by our company worked in this situation. Being able to identify the wires is my remedy to this issue.
EC135 pilot reported striking electrical wires while executing a precautionary landing in a field under worsening weather conditions.