Tristar
Pattern Altitude
Every pilot and even student for that matter has been exposed to a METAR Roughly translated from the French as METeorlogical Aviation Routine weather Reports. A METAR is of course the hourly surface weather observation that’s issued 5 minutes before the hour and available to the aviation community and used by the National weather service to determine an airports flying conditions (IFR,MVFR, VFR). You can obtain these from a variety of places both online and by phone. This is the basic knowledge of what ground school consists of on this topic other than deciphering its acronyms. Although as a pilot, sometimes its nice to know a little about how these services came to be without going too much into detail. Funny enough, the change to our current acronym of METAR is fairly recent.
Before the current interpretation of weather data, there were two formats and in rough terms it was “us and them” or rather to be more precise, the North American countries and the rest of the world. We were using SAO or “Surface Aviation Observation” (which was adopted in the 1950s) while the rest of the world was using the currently known METAR or “Meteorlogical aviation routine weather reports.” The FAA, who determines aviation requirements in the US, was becoming increasingly aware that we were expanding our horizons with international flights and pilots alike. This in turn created a strong need to standardize weather report interpretations internationally.
The National Weather Service wrote that beginning July 1st, the United states standardized the weather reports into what we now know as METARS. Although to lessen the stress on US aviation citizens, the metric system was kept to a minimum, example being the winds were kept in knots instead of meters per second, visibility in miles, altimeter settings in inches of mercury instead of hectoPascals and RVR will continue in feet. Temperatures, although, will be converted to Celsius to allow for better conversions. The biggest change is stated simply to the order in which elements are reported. Which in my opinion is great because of how I was taught but almost seems to defeat the idea of international standardization?
So in a sense, although the attempt at standardizing weather code from SAO to METAR is apparent, the actual translation is not substantial. Oh and for those of you who are students or pilots that don’t like translating code, there is a reason and a cure. First off do realize that METARs are always originated in code and probably will be for a while. The reason seems to be that with the vast amount of changes and updates to weather reports would overload the system. The great news is that now it is possible to translate the code online either through request from sites such as NOAA or by looking up the code yourself which will put it in simple English. Sometimes this helps those who are new to learn the code and not miss anything during preflight weather preparations.
Sources: www.nws.noaa.gov/oso/oso1/oso12/overview.htm
http://www.alaska.faa.gov/fai/afss/metar%20taf/metintro.htm
(Also a good source for additional info and abbreviation translations.)
Fly safe,
Tristan
Before the current interpretation of weather data, there were two formats and in rough terms it was “us and them” or rather to be more precise, the North American countries and the rest of the world. We were using SAO or “Surface Aviation Observation” (which was adopted in the 1950s) while the rest of the world was using the currently known METAR or “Meteorlogical aviation routine weather reports.” The FAA, who determines aviation requirements in the US, was becoming increasingly aware that we were expanding our horizons with international flights and pilots alike. This in turn created a strong need to standardize weather report interpretations internationally.
The National Weather Service wrote that beginning July 1st, the United states standardized the weather reports into what we now know as METARS. Although to lessen the stress on US aviation citizens, the metric system was kept to a minimum, example being the winds were kept in knots instead of meters per second, visibility in miles, altimeter settings in inches of mercury instead of hectoPascals and RVR will continue in feet. Temperatures, although, will be converted to Celsius to allow for better conversions. The biggest change is stated simply to the order in which elements are reported. Which in my opinion is great because of how I was taught but almost seems to defeat the idea of international standardization?
So in a sense, although the attempt at standardizing weather code from SAO to METAR is apparent, the actual translation is not substantial. Oh and for those of you who are students or pilots that don’t like translating code, there is a reason and a cure. First off do realize that METARs are always originated in code and probably will be for a while. The reason seems to be that with the vast amount of changes and updates to weather reports would overload the system. The great news is that now it is possible to translate the code online either through request from sites such as NOAA or by looking up the code yourself which will put it in simple English. Sometimes this helps those who are new to learn the code and not miss anything during preflight weather preparations.
Sources: www.nws.noaa.gov/oso/oso1/oso12/overview.htm
http://www.alaska.faa.gov/fai/afss/metar%20taf/metintro.htm
(Also a good source for additional info and abbreviation translations.)
Fly safe,
Tristan
We never should have changed!
