Sources of Weather Info?!

[Purdue]

Studying up for the BI briefing that includes "WW/SIGMETS/AIRMETS and Sources of Weather Information"

I'm wondering if anyone has any good acronyms or anything for these weather sources... To remember them all, and possibly to differentiate between them in my memory.

Thanks in advance, if nobody has any tricks... it'll just be back to rogue memorization of the entire FIH and FAR/AIM

 

[PropStop]

Go outside, look up. If your face gets wet, it is raining, otherwise, it isn't. WX brief complete.

 

[scoober78]

Use your API and Primary weather books...

 

[Gatordev]

For BIs, there's not a whole lot to know. FIH/PMSV are the easy answer. There's also the FSS...yes, you CAN actually use it. The rest of the methods are things you'll pickup in RIs and w/ experience.

Personally, I'm a fan of nws.noaa.gov. Why do you ask? I go look at the stuff on the NOAA site and make my own judgments. Then I go over to ask the forecaster what she thinks. What does she do? Pulls up nws.noaa.gov and points at things. Thanks for that.

 

[gregsivers]

What's great is now all the forecasters for the East coast are in Norfolk. Nothing like calling them to get a brief for Mayport. I'll second Gatordev, I've called them to get info and had the NOAA page up and could follow line by line what the dude was telling me. The support is so good, we've sometimes called 1-800-WXBRIEF to get a briefing for a local flight in Jax instead of waiting for the NGU weather guessers to update the -175.

 

[millerjd]

Not sure if I am missing the point, but I prefer Duats (http://www.duats.com/) over talking to someone and gives complete information from national trends to local weather current and predicted, winds aloft, Airmets, Sigmets, Notams, etc. and I can print it out right before the flight, read it, keep it just in case.

 

[Brett327]

For BIs, there's not a whole lot to know. FIH/PMSV are the easy answer. There's also the FSS...yes, you CAN actually use it. The rest of the methods are things you'll pickup in RIs and w/ experience.

Personally, I'm a fan of nws.noaa.gov. Why do you ask? I go look at the stuff on the NOAA site and make my own judgments. Then I go over to ask the forecaster what she thinks. What does she do? Pulls up nws.noaa.gov and points at things. Thanks for that.

Yeah, I've watched the highly trained "official" forecasters copy/paste TAFs from the NWS site onto my -1. This is what I waited 90 minutes for? Thanks a lot!

Brett

 

[cisforsmasher]

Here are some tricks I like. If you have a sweet e-brief system, www.wunderground.com has auto refreshing, looping, ten minute old radar. The aviationweather.gov doesnt auto refresh and you cannot zoom in. Another handy trick is that you can also call 1800 pilotwx to be put in contact directly with Norfolk weather office to have -1s faxed. All the stuff mentioned above is good gouge. In BIs you shouldnt need to know too much but in RIs be ready to discuss everything in the FIH from PMSV, FSS, HIWAS, TWEB, ATIS, all the way down to the different kinds of ASOS and AWOS. You will need to know it for your I4390, at least the dickhead i had made me.

 

[wxguesser]

Go outside, look up. If your face gets wet, it is raining, otherwise, it isn't. WX brief complete.

Sure you weren't an AG in another life? Sorry to interrupt...let the bashing continue.

 

[phrogpilot73]

Sure you weren't an AG in another life? Sorry to interrupt...let the bashing continue.

I KNEW IT! I knew that the training for AG's wasn't all that in-depth...

 

[ArkhamAsylum]

Point out that, per the AIM, TWEB exists in Alaska only.

 

[Gatordev]

Not sure if I am missing the point, but I prefer Duats (http://www.duats.com/) over talking to someone and gives complete information from national trends to local weather current and predicted, winds aloft, Airmets, Sigmets, Notams, etc. and I can print it out right before the flight, read it, keep it just in case.

I'm a big fan of Duats and use it to flight plan all the time. I tend to use NOAA when doing the pre-brief check just because I can check TAFs faster than going through the pages of text in Duats. It's just a workflow thing for me, as Duats is great, plus they log the "brief" so you're legal, per both 3710 and FAA.

 

[Rubiks06]

This for the advanced briefing items portion of the question. Go see Mr Gums. Tell him you would like a copy of the Natops Instrument Flight Manual. There are a lot of the discuss items that are one stop shopping there. Granted you should still back them up with the FAR/AIM/3710 but a lot of the really obscure ones are in there.

 

[ACurry]

Just take the opposite of the weather shop and you should be good. Its worked out great for me so far.

 

[Pags]

A buddy of mine called base wx here at chambers the other day and the respone he got was "hold on, he just went outside to look at it..."