Decoding Weather Reports

Decoding weather reports  is another very important skill to learn..

 I have given the abbreviations below in easy language. It is suggested you download the weather to Fltsim at the same time otherwise the weather will be wrong to the forecast.

VOLMET means groups of airports in a given area. Radio give the updated weather reports for airfields in the group and are changed about every 30 minutes.

IE London  Volmet Main will give all the weather at the main airports in United Kingdom.

What do reports mean in this format?  I will break it down bit by bit  for you into easy terms so you can understand. You can use the codes below to translate it.

Metar and TAF  reports have abbreviations

Report type  Location Date/time  Valid time   wind            visibility      weather   

TAF                EGLL    130600Z      130716        31015              8000            SHRA
         

 FEW005       SCT018CB BKN025  TEMPO  131116
4000 SHRA PROB30 131416 TSRA BKN010CB 

This report means :- Heathrow weather reported dated the 13 of the month at 0600 hours the valid time of the report is between 0700 to 1600 hours on the 13th the wind is 310 at 15 knots 8000 metres visibility with rain showers a few clouds at 500ft scattered thunderstorms at 1800ft broken clouds at 2500 ft/ Temporary on the 13th day between 1100 and 1600 hours visibility will be 4000 metres with rain showers  with a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms and rain showers with broken thundercloud at 1000ft.

Abbreviations  below of the common ones used :-

Some Excellent weather sites are included in the AVSIM Education Resource Centre.We therefore do not need to duplicate it here. My colleague Chuck has some excellent photos of weather on his site.

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