On The Weather Front
Tom George, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association
Evaluating the weather is a constant activity for general aviation pilots, making the determination when it is—or isn’t—a good time to aviate. While in many respects Alaska is a great place to fly, our sparse network of weather stations can make this aspect of flight planning a challenge. Fortunately, there are several efforts underway that, if successful, could improve the situation. While these are “work in progress,” here are some issues that AOPA and the Alaska Airmen’s Association are working on to enhance in our ability to find the weather data we need to make informed decisions.
New Reporting Stations
Over the past few years, Alaska has gained eight new Automated Weather Observing Systems (AWOS) funded by the FAA. They were acquired and installed by the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF), with federal funding at Akiachak, Coldfoot, Crooked Creek, Kotlik, Nulato, Perryville and Tok Junction. The stations were subsequently turned over to the FAA for maintenance. This is a step in the right direction, but more stations are needed to fill gaps in our network.
Access to Weather Data
Too many of our current weather stations have experienced partial, or in some cases, complete system failures, leaving us blind to current weather conditions in those locations. Fortunately, in the last FAA Reauthorization Bill, provisions were made directing FAA to investigate the health of the existing network of aviation weather stations in Alaska and Hawaii. This process is just getting underway and we will be following it closely.
Related to systems not being fully operational, AOPA and the Airmen’s have been advocating for an online dashboard to allow pilots to see the overall health of weather stations along a route we plan to fly. This too is now being explored, thanks to provisions in the FAA Reauthorization Bill and we believe such a tool could increase pilots’ awareness of the status of the weather stations, which is easy to miss when buried in a long list of NOTAMs. Figure 1 is an example of what a display might look like.
New Weather Station Standard
Another effort underway is the development of a new weather reporting standard, which would allow the development of a new generation of weather stations that are much less expensive than today’s legacy stations. While the actual development of an FAA-approved standard is still underway, there are commercial companies already developing package systems and deploying weather stations for private customers, such as Air Taxi operators who may use the data under provisions of their company-specific Operations Specifications. We would like to see similar weather data that is publicly available, without restriction. The aviation industry groups will continue to advocate for this approach to increase the density of weather reporting across Alaska.
New Weather Products
While work continues on new reporting stations, progress is being made with aviation weather tools that are available today. Although still experimental in nature, the Aviation Cross-section Product (https://aviation.cira.colostate.edu/define-custom-cross-section), developed by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, has added a new feature. In addition to providing a forecast of icing and cloud layers, users may now opt to see a forecast of smoke concentration along a user-defined route (Figure 2). During wildfire season, a weather model is used to generate a forecast of smoke concentration, which may be toggled on by the user to see if smoke might impact visibility along a planned flight route. Try this out in your spare time and keep it in mind when fire season arrives next spring.
While much has yet to be done, it is encouraging to see significant work underway to improve Alaska’s situation regarding aviation weather. Please use and provide feedback on the weather products we have today and stay tuned for developments on those yet to come.
Tom George works for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association covering issues in Alaska. He resides in Fairbanks and owns a Cessna 185. He may be reached at tom.george@aopa.org or 301-695-2092.
Figures:
Figure 1: A prototype dashboard showing the status of Alaskan AWOS and ASOS stations, developed by the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. A graphic tool such as this, if adopted as an operational product, could let pilots visualize the status of weather stations along a proposed route of flight.
Figure 2: The Aviation Cross-Section Product has now added a smoke forecast that can be toggled on to see where wildfire smoke might impact visibility along a user-defined route.