How to Read Aviation Weather Charts! - Interpret Aviation Weather

now there's a meteorologist in every single pilot and that's just because the weather is very important for your flight you know it's part of the flight preparation because it determines our officiant your flight is going to be how safe your flight is going to be and you know it just affects the way the aircraft performs any habes so looking at weather is very important prior to making your flight and that's why flight planners like to free rare ones for example rocket roots or Cimbri for professional flight plan or X which is a bailar one often provide you with weather charts and today we're going to take a look at those weather charts so just to give you a basic idea I will show you my way of how I look at the weather prior to making my fedsim flights and balls take a look at the weather charge that fly printers provide like the significant weather charts and how to read them and you know how to interpret them because it's you know very interesting information and you might want to add all those symbols on those unless charts mean but they do all have a meaning and some of them are very important so we're going to take a look at that and so let's go ahead and take a look at those charts so here in front of us we have a basic weather chart it's not necessarily an aviation weather chart but this is just simple chart that you can get at your national weather service for example here in LA in the Netherlands I got this one from there and you can propagate this kind of charge there as well or you can just view them in your flight plan okay so we can see a lot of things here we can see you know these letters H and L we can see these with little lines here we can see numbers so what does this all mean now let's first go into those H and LS and of course you may know they stand for high and low pressure systems so let's start with a low pressure system you can see one here a low pressure system is usually associated with bad weather and why is that well in low pressure systems the pressure is low so it's usually less than a thousand thirteen hecto Pascal's or 22.92 inches of mercury which are atmospheric pressure measurements that we use in aviation so what does this mean well it means that the air in this area is less dense so what will happen because the air is less dense it kind of rise up in this center area okay so it will go from the ground up into the center of the low-pressure system now of course when is air rises at some point is will a counter colder air as you may know if you've ever been in the mountains the air is called high at higher altitudes so here is the same principle at some points you will encounter colder air or this warmer air of the low pressure system will condensate and it will form clouds and all the associated weather you know phenomena that are associated so like rain or snow or just plows in general so you can see in low-pressure systems you kind of have to look out when you're an aviation simmer or pilots because it's usually associated associated with bad weather high pressure systems on the other ends are associated with good weather generally okay you can see that here you know you can see those lines the lines the closer the lines are together right away the stronger the winds are and can also see the numbers here like thousand fifty thousand forty five and so in high pressure systems we haven't pressure higher than thousand thirteen excess Pascal's or higher than twenty two point ninety two inches of mercury and we can see that in this case that's true okay so in the high pressure areas the air is more dense okay so what will happen instead of the air rising it will fall down to the ground and spread around a little bit so you know the as the arrow falls away from the center it's kind of more stable in these areas okay now we can see NAS charge and discharge a lot of information about this okay and we can see quite a significant low-pressure area here and some high pressure area here above Russia for example and you know it coincides a lot with the wind and with the satellite images okay now what happens in a low pressure system area in the northern hemisphere of the earth the wind or the air moves counterclockwise so if you follow my pointer here it will go this direction now if we look at the satellite images you can see that you know if you just look a little bit west of Spain right here you can see this low pressure system move counterclockwise as we advance in time you know using these satellite images same for this little low-pressure area that you can see on the chart here you can already kind of see it forming on the satellite images as well so the air moves counterclockwise in the low-pressure area and the northern hemisphere if you live in the southern hemisphere it's the other way around high pressure areas like the one right here will move the air clockwise ok so if we follow the pointer again let's start here for example the air will kind of move this way ok and again we can see that's kind of in the satellite images in high pressure air it's a bit more difficult to see but you know you get the idea ok so the next things are fronts and those are those little peculiar symbols that we see here ok so what do they mean let's go over them quickly now a front basically means when you cross it there is going to be a change of weather generally ok so you have to you know kind of take that into consideration when you fly that if you cross at your front based on weather prognosis chart so you can kind of imagine that you will enter different weather and when you're depart from ok so cold fronts like here are displayed with this blue line and the triangles point towards direction to which the front is moving so in this case it goes from this direction to this direction so it means colder air is coming in it usually is associated with higher wind speeds and some other weather but it's not really important you just have to remember that the weather will change and will get colder of course now warm fronts like this one indicated by the red line with the half circles again the half circles point in the direction to which the air or the front is moving here warmer air is coming in ok and usually is associated with clearing of weather and if no you know warm air stays in position a little bit there's a likely chance of thunderstorms developing now occluded fronts like which are these purple ones okay are kind of when a cold front overtakes a warm front so you can see you know blue with red is makes purple so you know kind of see where they got that color from and occluded front so it means that the cold front overtakes the warm front and it's associated with thunderstorms and other you know events of weather depending on the air temperature behind that front so again here the purple line indicates an occluded front and the symbols point in the direction at which the front moves now if we go back to our little chart here again we can see a lot of fronts like in the low-pressure system we can see that you know fronts being pushed out an occluded front in this way we can see another occluded one here and here above Europe we can also see a warm front here and then we also have an another one which is a stationary front and a stationary front is basically when the front doesn't move at all so you kind of have one symbol pointing to the left one symbol pointing to the right okay and again you can see the stationary front here so here you know the the weather in the front doesn't really move so it's usually associated with a lot of rain in the area because the rain will just stay in place without air really moving in any kind of direction so yeah you can kind of get an idea what these fronts mean on a basic weather chart so let's go into the aviation weather charts you know I think it's important as a simmer or even a real-world pilot you know I think they do with that in real life they look at the basic weather like the basic weather charts but once you get into the cockpit and at the airport you will be presented with true aviation charge so let's take a look now first of all wind charts probably you know the most important one well burry you know it tells you a lot about the efficiency of flight okay if you have a lot of headwinds of course you will burn a lot more fuel so let's take a look actually it's pretty easy okay the symbols just indicates a lot you kind of have to see this as a little flag alright in the direction of the wind is the yeah you know it goes from the top of the flag to the bottom of the flag kind of you know you kind of get the idea this is just from the legend of a rocket root fly plane associated with this chart okay so in this case the wind moves from the top to the bottom of the little flag okay so it moves from left to right and then you have the symbols on the flags you have a little stick here indicate five knots you have the larger stick here indicating ten knots and you have the triangle indicating 50 knots now on the weather chart you will see multiple of these symbols in one flag and you just have to add them together so for example two triangles makes fifty knots one triangle one you know large stick and one small stick makes fifty plus ten plus 5 is 65 knots okay so if we take a look at the weather chart here we can see that right we have for example this one we can see that this you know little wind flag indicates that the wind is moving from this direction to this direction with in speed of 50 plus 10 plus 10 makes 70 knots an order flag here for example indicates the speed of 50 plus 5 is 55 knots now as you can see you kind of get a general idea about the direction of the wind so you can kind of draw an arrow right here to see where it's flight which is going from M stem to Bratislava so you're going to fly from the and the west to the east you can see that the wind direction is roughly similar to the roots which indicates that we'll have some nice tailwind right here now here's another example of a wind chart and this is a flight from Sagar in the Faroe Islands to Keflavik Airport in Iceland and as you can see it's a bit different right we can see you know wind vanes in different directions and at smaller speeds for example only five knots only ten knots so that's not a lot so we can can draw those arrows again and we can see that the air moves counterclockwise now where have you seen this before that's right and low-pressure systems right we can see a low-pressure system here now please do note that these charts are you know that are provided by a fly planner might be a little bit of time difference in between them like this one is from six o'clock what this one is from twelve o'clock at night from that day so you can see by the time six hours later this pressure system probably has moved a bit more towards Iceland and we can see that you know from the wind direction you can already kind of see what kind of pressure system will be you know in your area so the wind moves counterclockwise and then you know we can already anticipate okay there's a low-pressure system area here because air in the low pressure system will move counterclockwise now if this would be in map in Australia let's just pretend that this is Australia you know this actually would be a high pressure system because then it works the other way around then if the air moves counterclockwise it would be a high pressure system but for now let's focus on a northern hemisphere to make things easier to prevent confusion but if you live in a southern hemisphere just you know we have to kind of have to turn everything around that I said okay so counter clockwise low pressure clockwise will be a high pressure area so you can see for example here is in the high pressure area and here's a low pressure area so the wind moves here in this direction and the winds around this high pressure area will move in this direction you can so you can kind of see that you know the wind kind of moves in this direction in between those low and high pressure areas you can you know can easily draw that here the same okay wind will move around here from the high pressure and wind it will move here from the left pressure again creating this wind movement right here okay so that's the basic idea of the wind now of course at altitude the winds will be higher in general okay so you have to take that into account this is a way to chart provided by a rocket root flight plan and you know you can easily see that the winds are very high for example here at flat level three four zero so in some cases it might be more efficient to fly at a higher flight level even though we have to burn more fuel getting there you know if you're gonna have a lot of tail wind at that flight level then it might be more beneficial or if you have a low hat went at a certain fly level you might want to keep at a lower flight level or climb at a higher flight level where you have less headwind you know because you don't want to run out of fuel once you get close to your arrival Airport okay so it's very important to realize the direction of wind and the strength of wind when planning your flight but usually the flight planning will do a good job at fuel calculating so next up are the most I think interesting charts the significant weather charts and they indicate a lot and are very important because they will indicate areas where you have a lot of wind and where it might be dangerous to fly so let's take a look so here's the basic a significant way to chart as you can see we see a lot of things we can see you know text so we can see numbers again we can see these large arrows and you know all kinds of little cloudy areas as it seems so let's take a look I you know as with any chart and aviation you just have to look from the bottom or from the top to the bottom right so you can see well it's issued by blah blah blah it runs from flight level 100 to flat over 450 it's valid at 6 UTC on the 4th of January 2015 and yeah you know you kind of have to know the times the times of your charts what levels it displays okay so kind of a kit an idea or what you're looking at okay so here are some of the most and symbols that you will see on a significant weather chart I think those four right here are the most important you know the moderate turbulence severe turbulence the model is icing and severe icing these are some other symbols that you might encounter but which are not really of importance right now okay so if we look at the chart we can see a lot of things and let's first take a look at this large arrow and this arrow indicates a jet stream and a jet stream is made use of when flying transatlantic flights for example you know you want to make as much use of this jet stream when flying from the west to the east you know so we get a lot of tailwind so your flight is more quicker and efficient and of course you want to avoid the jet stream when you're flying from the east to the west because otherwise you're going to be flying a lot of headwinds a matter of lava turbulence for example so these large arrows indicates at what fly level the jet stream is located approximately and what the speed is so in this case this jet stream over here is at flight level three seven zero with a speed of 50 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 is 19 knots and right here is a bit faster even like under than 10 knots and here is even more fast under than 30 knots and here it dies down a little bit again okay so you can see the altitude and speed of the jet stream now next up is the significant weather areas of course it's aware and high level significant way the chart is for so we can see here isolated embedded cumulonimbus clouds okay so we can see also in the description I've included a link to the document that tells you a lot about these charts but this one is what you most frequently see it means that there are commute load nimbus clouds which are thunderstorm clouds basically in this area with the top height you know the top level of flight level 3 5 0 so above flood level 3 5 0 you won't enter those clouds but once you get below flight level 3 5 0 you'll be flying in those clouds and the X X means that you know it's below the bottom limit of those clouds is below what the weather chart actually is able to probe notes okay so our chart was running from flat level 100 to flat or flat level 450 so this means that these clouds are somewhere in between flat oval 350 and some altitude lower than flat level 100 okay same with these icing areas okay you can see here moderate turbulence and icing and this icing conditions in this area are running from a flat of 1 6 0 or from the bottom up somewhere below file of 102 flat of 1 6 0 same for the icing for example here it runs from some level below fly level 102 flat 420 okay so these charts are or these areas are very important to take into consideration because as you cross those areas you might want to adjust your flight level or in case of the cumulonimbus you know isolated embedded it means that those clouds are embedded within other clouds and let them they'll also be isolated cumulonimbus clouds and this you know is important because you might want to turn your weather it on here to avoid a Klaus if you're flying somewhere in between these flight levels or if you're flying to an airport you know which is within this area okay so if we go back to our chart we can see a lot of things you know here over the Atlantic Ocean you know we have this isolated embedded cumulonimbus clouds again flat over 3 5 0 & 2 words or below eye level 103 we have this huge jet stream over here then we have some icy conditions over here so if we for example would fly to Vienna Airport which is right here you know as we approach you know you have to take into consideration the turbulence below flatter 16160 towards somewhere below fly 100 and the possible below my level one six zero and somewhere below flat over 100 okay and then there are some other symbols on this chart for example this one this indicates the tropopause height that's the I will talk about it later and this symbol indicates the height of the pressure system and what kind of pressure system it is now I mentioned tropopause and tropopause is the transition between the troposphere in which we live and the stratosphere okay now if you're flying you're likely to cross the troposphere sometime okay sometimes it can be very low sometimes it's going to be very high that you don't even cross it but it might happen and why is the tropopause important to take into consideration when flying well near this area there's large variation in winds and temperature okay and what this means is that the weather is pretty unstable and will affect your flights and you have to be careful in this region things you might encounter are wind shear and turbulence for example so if you notice that you're crossing the topo pass a layer you you know we have to take into consideration that you might experience wind shear or turbulence or other you know things that affect your flights and yeah it can be a bit bumpy up there okay so for example here we know that the tropopause is at flight well for hundreds so if you are flying it above the fly level and you're descending for an airport right here for example you might be crossing it for example here the layer is way too high you know usually in normal airliners you won't cross that maybe some business jets for example here it's pretty low okay so there's a higher chance that you will cross it okay and this is another charge provided by Cimbri from fly plane flying from Chicago to Amsterdam and to see that's the height differs a lot you can see this on this chart okay so actually in a cruise level we cross it two times here at level three five zero and then sometime later at level three five zero again so it's important to take into consideration you might monitor on the seatbelt sign when you're near this tropopause ya lair so guys thanks for watching this video here on the aviation approach you know I hope this helped you out and it you know it builds you a little bit because I find meteorology quite interesting and looking at those wetter charts and I always look at sky and look at those clouds and I think they're very beautiful and of course in flying if you're flying it's even more beautiful so thanks for watching and make sure you head over to patreon.com/scishow aviation pro to support the AVH prote channel if you want to it would be very much appreciated and make sure you subscribe comments like you know I try to answer every single comment on my videos so thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: AviationPro

Views: 78,519

Rating: 4.9131513 out of 5

Keywords: aviation, weather, charts, weather charts, significant weather, pressure systems, winds, barometric pressure, flight simulator, prepar3d, vatsim, online flying, rocketroute, simbrief, pfpx, aerosoft, aloft, isol embd cb, thunderstorms, fronts, cold, warm, flight simulation, turbulence, icing, wind flags, wind vane, vanes, lightning, flying, barbs, jetstream, jet stream, atlantic, knmi, occluded, hpa, hectopascal, 2992, fs2004aviationpro, aviationpro, pro, altimeter, sig wx, forecast, rain, snow, precipitation

Id: 7zjKDbEiJig

Length: 22min 57sec (1377 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2016