Learning Weather Trends and What They Tell You

I find this irksome as one of the first skills a pilot should develop is the ability to acquire a weather briefing. Although I no longer fly on a daily basis, one of the first things I do each morning is to pull up a weather briefing from Leidos Flight Service, more commonly known as 1800WXBRIEF.

Weather is one of the first ground lessons I do with my learners, beginning by having them create a 1800WXBRIEF account that will allow them to access a weather briefing by both computer and telephone. It doesn’t require a paid subscription, which is something appreciated by the budget conscious.

The weather briefing I have preprogrammed reaches from Portland, Oregon, to Bellingham, Washington, a distance of approximately 261 sm. I like the big canvas as it shows plenty of meteorological aerodrome reports (METARs) and terminal aerodrome forecasts (TAFs) that allows me to observe trends in the weather. I encourage my learners to do something similar as it helps them discover weather patterns in their area so they know what is heading their way.

Next, we talk about local weather trends and the gotchas in our part of the world, such as when the lenticular clouds appear over Mount Rainier, you don't want to fly near it. We discuss how to interpret what they see and read. I teach them to be wary when they see the certain acronyms, such as pressure falling rapidly (PRESFR), freezing fog (FZFG), and the dreaded $, the latter telling us the station needs maintenance and the information it provides is suspect. After they learn how read acronynm-ese they can hit the decode button, but for the knowledge test they need to know the latter.

The dollar sign does not automatically manifest. Coming back from the practice area one afternoon, the learner accessed the AWOS, and there was a report of drizzle and a ceiling of 600 feet. We looked at each other in puzzlement. It was a VFR day and although we were a good 7 miles from the airport, we could see the runway and there was nary a cloud overhead. The learner did a quick troubleshooting—double-checking the frequency on the sectional—then we heard the airport identified read by the "tin man" again letting us know we had the right place. About an hour later there was a NOTAM in place warning about the unreliable weather station.

“Everything is pink. We’re not flying.”

I received the text from an instrument candidate during a week of thick fog. Even by Seattle standards, it was so foggy that even the geese were walking.

A textual weather briefing from 1800WXBRIEF.com was filled with hot pink low instrument flight rules (LIFR), red instrument flight rules (IFR), and one marginal VFR (MVFR). I tip my hat to the person who came up with the color coding, because these reports are a lot easier to interpret and teach especially when combined with Chapter 7 of the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) that has the details of the categorical outlook terms, describing general ceiling and visibility conditions in area forecasts.

On the METAR map, circles are used to mark airports. Gray means the station is not reporting. Yellow is unknown. Pink is LIFR, red is IFR, blue is MVFR, and green is VFR. Pair this with 7-1-7 out of the AIM that provides a description of categorial outlook terms used to describe general ceiling and visibility conditions used in the area forecasts.

These are as follows:

Weather—specifically the challenges it presents to the inexperienced pilot—may be one of the most misunderstood aspects of learning to fly. 

I have encountered fledgling pilots who presumed that since airliners take off in low clouds and fog that their mighty Piper or Cessna trainer could do the same. The CFI responds to this by  explaining the concepts of ceiling and visibility—and please do this early in their training.

When the dispatch person hands the learner or a renter the keys to the airplane, there's not much that can be done to stop that person from flying. After a freshly soloed pilot almost took off in foggy IFR (stopped by a CFI who realized this was a bad idea), the flight school boss thought it wise to put a photocopy of 7-1-7 out of the AIM next to the computer at the dispatch desk with a note in red warning that student pilots were not permitted to solo in LIFR, IFR, or out of the pattern in MVFR. 

Most CFIs understand that sometimes the weather sneaks up on us. Pretty much every pilot can tell a story about the time they pushed MVFR when the weather started to go bad and they had to race back to the airport or make a landing at another airport to prevent an encounter with instrument meteorological conditions (IMC).  Both of these will be the stories you tell your learners when you become the CFI.