Weather stations run by federal agencies

Weather stations keep extensive records and empirical data past weather data, climate data real time weather data, and air quality data.

Sometimes data makes it into the Guinness Book of World Records. Often, it is used to calibrate aircraft instruments.

Government observers and technicians are highly trained and well paid. Because this stuff is important.

What do official observations look like?

For a forecast, the official phrase is Terminal Aerodrome Forcast or TAF for short.

METARs are weather observations encoded in a special language. The format has become the world standard for weather stations, as set by ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization.

For the most recent observations somewhere in the USA, find your nearest airport four letter code, for example KLAX for Los Angeles Airport.

If you need your airport weather station code, use this webpage. Type the city name and hit submit. Find the 4-letter code after the initials ICAO.

Big cities and two-word city names will give a list of several weather stations and you'll need to find the right one. Then go to the government page here and type that code in.

Canadians locations have a good one. It gives the last three METAR weather observations and TAF weather forecasts. It also allows you to type in the city name if you don't know the airport code.

Experienced the cold?

Everybody knows Canada is cold. Always. What do you think?

This country never has summer. Or does it?

Ever been to Canada? Or some other northern place? Russia? Sweden? Alaska?

Antarctica??

Was it a shock?

Other cold weather examples

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Data History Weather

The speed and direction can be determined by airport wind socks or anemometers combined with with weather vanes.

10SM - Visibility in statute miles. There could be fractions if visibility is poor. 10 miles shown here is pretty good. If it is bad, visibility can also be recorded in feet for each runway.

CLR - No cloud sky. Rain would be RA, light snow=-SN, Heavy showers=+SH, Fog=FG.

If there are clouds, the codes for coverage BKN for broken, OVC for overcast, FEW, SCT for scattered are given. VV indicates the furthest upwards the observer can see and the height in hundreds of feet follow each of these codes. So we might see BKN040 to mean broken clouds 4000 feet high.

If several layers of cloud can be seen, they will report them all starting with the lowest.

09/01 - gives us Temperature followed by Dew Point in degrees centigrade, aka Celsius. Capital M for minus means below freezing values. To get Fahrenheit temperatures: add 40, divide by 5, multiply by 9, and then subtract 40.

A3006 - Altimeter setting, for pilots. Set it for 30.06 inches of mercury if you flying a plane and departing at this time.

RMK AO2 - RMK means remarks, they may talk about recent weather, cloud types such as CB for cloud cumulonimbus, or other elements. Manned weather stations have this feature, other stations are automated and cannot elaborate on cloud types and such.

Wind shear - this is a real problem for pilots. We record shear here if present. AO2 is some kind of special code added by NOAA weather stations and not used in all countries.

SLP180 - Pressure. Adjusted for Sea Level. If the number is greater than 500 divide by 10 and add 900. And if it is less than 500, divide by 10 and add 1000 to get millibars. Then you can get kiloPascals by dividing by 10, or inches of mercury by dividing by 33.8653. You'll need a calculator for that one.

T00940006 - Can be ignored, not used by all weather stations.

This is the kind of flight weather data the official weather stations provide.

When placed on a surface analysis map, the code will look more like this.

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