Bill Crawford’s Flightlab Blog

Here’s what I do when I’m working out the weather for a cross-country. Until recently, I relied on CSC DUATS and the AOPA web site, but I’ve started using the NOAA National Weather Service site, www.weather.gov, as well—both for long-range forecasts and for specific information the day of the flight. (I still prefer AOPA for the current radar picture. It’s prettier there, actually.) I’m not an early adopter in the weather briefing by computer department, and can’t say exactly when color-coding was introduced to show flight categories, but I think it’s revolutionary. The colors allow you to get the basic weather pattern immediately, at a glance. It jumps out; you don’t have to go in and decipher.

I go to www.weather.gov/forecasts/graphical/sectors/conusWeek.php#tabs for long-range planning, This page gives a national map you can interact with by moving your cursor over a time scale that extends a week into the future. The map’s graphics show the predominant forecast weather (rain, snow, fog, mix, ice) for a given time period. You can click on “Daily View” for the shorter period ahead, broken down into more detail (predominant weather, temperature, dewpoint, wind, sky cover, etc). I find the information much easier to take in than on the traditional forecast presentations, especially as a function of change over time. And I like that the time reference is EST (at the moment), not that leftover Rule Britannica Greenwich merry old London ZULU nonsense.

If I’m flying that day, my first stop is www.weather.aero/metars. I click “Flight Category” on the lower left, to see a current national map depicting areas of low IFR, IFR, MVFR, and good old VFR. You also can get tricky and break the flight category down into ceiling and visibility components.

Then I often go to www.adds.aviationweather.gov/satellite, to check out the view from space—by clicking “Western U.S.” or “Eastern U.S.” This shows a satellite image with superimposed color-coded station reports. Although the sky cover in Pangapangapapa may not matter much if you’re headed to Poughkeepsie, you can also get international satellite imagery on this page. It’s fun to look at, and reminds you to think globally even while acting locally.

Next is www.aviationweather.gov/products/nws/tafs/graphics. Here you can cycle through a synoptic view of Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (TAFs) stretching out over the next twelve hours. This page is still in testing and doesn’t always seem to work. But it has my vote. It provides a quick way of determining whether the trend is friend or foe.

Now that I have a general sense of what’s what, I pry into nature’s most intimate secrets at www.adds.aviationweather.gov/metars/java/index.php?appletsize=large. This is the METARs Java Tool page. It shows current METARS across the entire country, but you can zero in on the geographical area of interest to you. The weather is depicted using the standard station plot codes (the circle with the wind flag sticking out, surrounded by all those cryptic numbers and weather symbols). The cool thing is that you can turn the graphic elements on and off, or you can flash them like suburban Christmas lights to make them easier to pick out. As a result of how it’s set up, this web page interactively teaches you to read station plots. Plus, place the curser on the station and the corresponding METAR text appears. You can also turn on a TAF overlay, wait a moment while electrons discuss among themselves, and then see those weather stations with TAF forecasts associated with them appear as black squares. Place the curser on the black square and the corresponding TAF appears. The data is not translated, but getting fluent in METARs and TAFs in their native format is no big deal. Even airline pilots can do it. Even I can do it, broadly speaking. Flight instructors should send their students to this page, especially instrument students!

The address www.adds.aviationweather.gov/metars presents another view of weather station graphics. After you click on a region of the country, a map appears showing the current aviation weather station plots. Go to the pull-down box at the top center of the map, and give it a click to open a TAF list extending into the future (or even METARs into the past, if you’re that big a wonk). Click away. Now the station models give the terminal area forecasts for the period you’ve chosen.

There’s a lot more available on the NOAA web site, such as turbulence and icing. You can have fun searching for the goodies. I mentioned that I go to AOPA for radar, but you might feel differently. For years, I listened to the Flight Service Station briefer and pretended to be writing down and following everything the briefer said. Yet the details often went by too fast. I still get a briefing (abbreviated, usually) but now it’s mostly with a bunch of NOAA weather printouts and a CSC DUATS-generated route forecast and flight log already in hand—essentially just to cover my butt in case some late-erupting Temporary Flight Restriction lies waiting to confiscate the pilot certificate. I find that I now tend to get my good-morning weather fix from the computer, rather than from The Weather Channel. Considering the commercials and the socially penetrating banter that meteorologists are famous for, it takes less time by computer. And despite that most of my flying is VFR local aerobatic and unusual-attitude instruction, daily use of the computer gives me practice absorbing and analyzing aviation weather over wide areas, even when I’m not planning a real flight. That way, when I do need to go a distance through lurking muck, I’m at least capable of finding out where the muck is most likely to be.