Terminal aerodrome forecasts, better known as TAFs are issued 4 times daily and represents a forecast for the expected meteorological conditions at an airport that are significant to aviation for a specified period of time. Normally this period is 24 hours. While 24 hours will still be the norm...

Pilots are taught many rules of thumb with respect to weather. In many instances they can replace real weather analysis, and therefore, lead to poor decisions. If you ask an instrument pilot about rules of thumb related to airframe icing, they will usually bring up one known as the...

It’s never a good practice to rely too heavily on any one piece of weather guidance when making a preflight decision. For those pilots that regularly use the Current Icing Product (or CIP) for your preflight weather briefings you’ll want to pay close attention. While CIP usually does...

An air mass is an extremely large body of air whose properties of temperature and moisture are fairly similar in any horizontal direction at any given latitude. While air masses are three-dimensional, their lateral dimensions are typically two or three orders of magnitude larger than their vertical dimensions. Most pilots tend to focus what may occur at the air mass boundary and rarely...

There are many kinds of ways to represent the surface pressure. The one that most pilots are familiar with is the altimeter setting. It’s typically provided to pilots on a standard briefing and may be obtained by pilots on the ground or in flight by air traffic control or by...

NEXRAD from the NWS WSR-88D Doppler radars is probably one of the first products a pilot studies before departing on any cross country flight. For the most part, it provides a very high glance value with very little knowledge or training required to use the product safely. It’s also the data used to build the satellite weather display employed by thousands of pilots in the cockpit. However, the NEXRAD image isn’t always clean and...

A terminal aerodrome forecast (TAF) is perhaps the most difficult forecast any meteorologist will ever make. What pilots don’t realize, however, is that a TAF is sometimes filled to the brim with assumptions and overflows with meteorological risk. Forecasters are obliged to...

Surface observations are an important part of any preflight weather analysis. They provide the latest weather conditions significant to aviation at an airport. Whether in the form of a METAR or by the ground-to-air radio broadcasts, pilots use surface observations to make many routine operational decisions. Prior to taxi, it...

Every pilot must get beyond the generalizations and simple rules of thumb they were taught in their primary training. When the weather is even remotely challenging, the need to work hard to put together an objective analysis of the weather using a method that works every time is...

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Every pilot must get beyond the generalizations and simple rules of thumb that rarely apply especially when Mother Nature is at her worst. When the weather is even remotely challenging, the need to work hard to put together an objective analysis of the weather using a method that works every time is paramount. In this preview you will learn...