Meteo·Mobile Blog

The Blog for Mobile Aviation Weather for smartphones

Tag Archives: IFR

METAR: reloaded decoded

A Metar can get confusing at times, specially for newbies.
That’s when it is helpful to have a decoder handy.

The first version of Meteo·Mobile’s metar decoder has just been released today.
It’s far from perfect, but has some of the  more important pieces of information always present in a metar report.

While pilots start enjoying this first version, we are already working on the new one, with lots of additional information.

How do you get it? Easy!
Just look for the ‘decode’ link right next to the  Heading of the met report:

KMIA metar with decode link

And here is what you’ll see once you click on the decode link:

KMIA metar decoded

As you can see, so far, the decoded elements are:

  • flight conditions (lifr, ifr, mvfr, vfr)
  • Wind direction, average intensity and gusts
  • Ceiling
  • Visibility
  • Temperature
  • Dew Point
  • Relative humidity
  • QNH
  • Metar raw report

Enhanced Flight Condition Statistics

We recently deployed an improvement on Flight Condition Statistics…

To get there, simply get your airport’s Metar and Click on the Flight Conditions Statistics link there.

Now, the current month statistics will also be available, not having to wait to the end of the month for the flight condition (VFR,IFR, LIFR, MVFR) statistics to be calculated.

You’ll see that when you visit your favourite airport’s flight condition statistics page, a new chart like this appears:

Miami (KMIA) March 2010 Flight Condition Statistics

See above Miami’s (KMIA) Flight Condition chart for March 2010. In it, the percentage of METAR belonging to the categories VFR, MVFR and IFR are plotted hourly. This is a nice picture of the airports average conditions for that particular month and hour. You can compare this chart to the same month last year and see if this month is worse or better than that.

Flight schools can also use this information to estimate the flight hours available at an airport, depending on the hour of the day and month.
Pilots can plan their flight to arrive at an unknown aiport at the best time according to their own criteria regarding MVF, VFR or IFR…

Compare Miami’s chart above to that of Brookings (KBOK):

Brookings (KBOK) Flight Condition Statistics, March 2010

Or that of Delhi (VIDP):

Delhi's Flight Condition Statistics, March 2010

That’s a BIG difference, isn’t it?

Let us know how you like it!

If the statistics don’t show at first, just refresh the page. There are huge calculations behind this and sometimes your browser will timeout before getting the results from our server.