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...

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...

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...

Rarely used by pilots, Center Weather Advisories or CWAs provide aviation with the “front lines” of adverse weather within the U.S. This includes advisories for low IFR conditions, thunderstorms, icing, and turbulence, just to name a few. When they exist...

During the cold season, it is quite common to find a blanket of stratocumulus clouds in the wake of a strong cold front. Stratocumulus clouds rarely have a depth of more than a few thousand feet. Even when it is cold enough for structural icing, pilots are often tempted to descend or climb through this rather...

Once you step away from the computer and head out to preflight your airplane, many decisions pertaining to the flight have already been made. Route and altitude have been chosen and your flight plan has been filed hoping it will minimize your exposure to adverse weather. But the weather analysis doesn’t stop after the door to the cockpit is shut and you’re taxiing out to depart; in fact, on some long cross country flights it’s just beginning...

Convective outflow boundaries emanating from deep, moist convection may be a precursor for an encounter with severe turbulence and dangerous low level wind shear or may quietly pass by without raising a single leaf on a tree. The pilot’s best defense is to recognize and characterize the outflow boundary using...