Transcription
Uh, today we're going to talk about, uh, as you can see, quite a few things. So, charts, radar, and PIREPs. Um, so in this case, uh, we're going to touch on each one of them. We're going to look at, uh, Aviation Weather Center a little bit more. And, uh, if things go well, I kind of have it set up to show you the difference between, uh, a standard account and an account that you sign up for, just so you get an idea of what it looks like, you know, between the two. And, uh, we'll just kind of walk through that. We'll talk a little bit about what radar is, how it works, uh, what it looks like, that kind of stuff. And then, of course, pilot reports. Uh, we talked a little bit about pilot reports, like showing you the form itself, on how you fill it out. And, uh, of course, you do it over the radio, uh, if you were to give it to Flight Service. But we'll talk a little bit more about, like, AIRMETs and PIREPs in general, uh, where you can get the information from, and, uh, how you can like obtain it and use it.
So, so today we're going to start on charts. Not of course, aeronautical charts that, uh, you would use in Stanley's class as far as Private Pilot. But we're going to talk about, uh, Aviation Weather Service charts. So we'll look at the, uh, surface analysis. There's a bunch of different pieces of information on a surface analysis chart. Uh, I know we've already talked about, uh, some of the components on that, and we'll give you kind of a little, uh, informal quiz, something we'll all do together, uh, to point out certain things that you'll see on a surface analysis chart. So, uh, you should be ready to answer for some of those. That'll be kind of cool. Uh, ceiling visibility chart. Uh, we've, we might have touched on that. You see it again for sure tonight, uh, as far as being able to tell where the VFR weather is concerned. Um, next, uh, radar, what it is, uh, where you can locate the information, and how you can use it. Um, this is, uh, there's a different type of like a chart. So the next, uh, coded radar chart will show you what that looks like, and that's kind of a go-to, uh, to try and figure out like where precipitation is and stuff like that. Uh, we'll differentiate surface analysis from constant pressure charts, and so you know what the differences are between the two, which are really important, especially when it comes to taking quizzes and answering questions with the DPE, right? And then last but not least, is the graphic, uh, forecast, and, uh, for aviation. So the GFA tool, uh, kind of took the place of what used to be called an area, uh, chart. Uh, they don't have that anymore, though. You can, it's, it's actually in the pull-down menu. I don't know why it's still there. You click on it, it tells you they don't make it anymore. But, uh, you'll see the GFA tool is really cool, uh, where you can manipulate the data on it, you can put your route over the top, and all that kind of good stuff. So, me show you that. And of course, I'll talk quickly or briefly about PIREPs and being able to see the information.
So we'll start off, uh, with something pretty basic. This is what most of us see when we watch the weather, is a surface analysis chart. Though, when you watch the weather, of course, they don't call it that, but that's what it is. And how we would use this, and the way you think about a surface analysis chart is, uh, whenever we, uh, well, take off and land, hopefully we do that on the surface somewhere, right? And of course, that's when you need the information that's on this chart. So all the rest of it, which is in-route, you'd need the other type of chart, which, which we'll talk about here in a little bit. Um, but we'll start with a surface analysis chart and what kind of information is on it. So it includes, as you can see, a lot of the stuff that we've either talked about before, you hopefully very familiar with, uh, as far as like your highs and lows, the ridges, the troughs. There's no ridges on this particular chart on the right, uh, but it does show, um, a lot of troughs in it, uh, which is very handy to be able to figure out where that elongated area of low pressure is located, as you know, as as it goes from high to low and that convergence and divergence that goes through, as far as the air is concerned. But in this case, we're just talking about the surface. And with surface, surface, the altitude of the surface, of course, would be zero, zero in relation to the station in which you're getting the information from. So, in other words, John Wayne Airport's at 52 or 53 feet, right? That is John Wayne Airport's zero, uh, you know, altitude, uh, because it's, of course, above ground level, which is, uh, based upon the surface. So when you look at the different lines of pressure, as you can see on this chart, uh, there's some that say 1023, see the highs, 1023. And I don't, there's a few, like if you look up in Canada, just off to the center to the right, you'll see one that says 1024. So that's an isobar, and that's telling you what the pressure is at the surface, uh, which is important, uh, especially when it comes to taking off and landing, being able to set that in your altimeter's window. Though on this particular case, it's in millibars, so you would need a different number to be able to do that, unless you have a dual control altimeter, which is kind of cool. Um, anyway, but it is based upon zero or whatever it is at the surface. Um, and the biggest thing for you to remember, of course, is those lines of pressure, like the one up in Canada I used as an example, are called isobars, bar being the iso meaning it's the same altitude for all those pressure numbers that you see on this chart. It's all based upon zero feet AGL. They have another fancy word for it, but, you know, if you really want to know, look up in the meteorology site. And, uh, let's see, really quick, it's called a geopotential height, which we'll never use that as aviators, but just so you know, they actually have an altitude name for it. Uh, we just call it zero AGL, right?
Weather Prediction Center. Uh, this is another chart as far as surface analysis, and it gives us a little bit more information as aviators. Uh, in this case, we have a, it's, we have the radar that's superimposed over the top, and then you can also see different temperatures based upon the, the, the color gradients on this particular chart. So, um, this one does come out quite often. So this is a little different from the last time we were talking about, like, every, you know, four times a day. Uh, in this case, it comes out eight times a day, quite often, because things do change, uh, on surface analysis, depending on how fast the weather is moving through, they need to be able to keep up. So they issue it a little bit faster. All right.
So, uh, when we get into some of the Aviation Weather Center, I'll show you the differences between, uh, you know, a standard account and one that you sign up for, which is free, of course. Uh, you can see the difference in how you can set it up. We'll work, we'll work through that. Um, it also has, uh, a tutorial, uh, in Aviation Weather Center if you need it, which works out pretty good. So the forecast, of course, that you do receive, every time you receive a forecast, it is good for 12 hours, though it does get issued, uh, eight times a day. So you can see the times that they are issued, and then every time it is issued, that that one is good for 12 hours. The next one, of course, is good for 12 hours. So you get the idea. So you can start to see trends, which is the important part.
So one of the goals that, uh, I have with this class, of course, is to see if we can take what we've learned so far and apply it to something. So in this case, I've taken one of the surface analysis charts and I've blown it up. And, uh, hopefully we all work together and see if we can identify, uh, some of the objects that are on this chart. Uh, if not, no worries. I'll go ahead and explain the, you know, the information. There's one that's kind of set it up so, because I haven't talked about it before, but you never know, somebody might have the answer. So get your fingers ready and see if you can, uh, go ahead and and answer what you feel that the arrow is pointing to. So what is this arrow pointing to? And of course, if, uh, if I was handing out extra credit, what's the rotation of the air surrounding a low, clockwise or counterclockwise? There you go. Counterclockwise is correct. Awesome. All right. Uh, the next arrow. There we go. What is that? Very cool. All right. The next one is this one. Who can tell me what that symbol is? It's kind of a front, but it's not a front. It is a boundary between two air masses. I just thought I'd throw it out there and see if you guys could guess. Uh, this one is called a dry line. And the reason why it's called a dry line is because on the right hand side of that symbol, it's where all that warm, moist air comes from, right? So think about the Gulf of Mexico or the, the gulf right there, as as it starts to pull in some of that warm, moist air, uh, from the ocean. And then on the other side of that is it's dry air. So it can be warm. Usually something like this, uh, does, uh, start to have an effect during the summers. Typically, this is one of those things that can cause two different completely different air masses that are kind of there all the time, uh, but then they start to interact with each other in the middle of the summer and create a lot of the tornadoes and stuff like that that we see. Uh, and the main reason why is because there's a huge difference between moisture content between these two different air masses and temperatures between the two different air masses. So dry lines are weird because they don't work like a regular front, though they do define that way because they're two different completely, you know, different sets of air masses, right? But the, but it actually, like, during the day, it moves towards the east. During, as the sun goes down, it starts to move back towards the west. So it doesn't really go away, it just kind of hangs out as long as there's a different enough, uh, amount of, of temperature and moisture between the two different air masses for it to exist. Otherwise, and it was like, it was, it was named because of course, most of the air that's to the left, or to the, to the west, uh, is dry. So they call it a dry line as it interacts with the moist air, uh, from the other side of Texas in this case. But if you look at where, like, Tornado Alley is, that kind of, you know, that's pretty much where Tornado Alley is, as you start to go north, uh, from Texas, going up to, to, uh, the northern parts of the United States. So that's called a dry line. You won't really see that a lot on, on the charts, but if you do, uh, it's nice to be able to identify that because if you are flying, that's something to pay attention to, because as you'll see in some of the, uh, charts I'm going to show you later, uh, you can get some pretty nasty weather, uh, that's usually associated with these two different air masses competing against each other and creating all that friction between those two different air masses.
All right. So the next one is, there it is. What is that? That orange dashed line. So we have a lot of convergence going on there, which is kind of neat. Uh, get a lot of weather associated with it. You can see that it doesn't show the, the Canadian side, if you were to kind of follow that trough up. But, uh, there's, there's more rain above it. Guy, jipped. I mean, what were you flying? What if you were flying to Canada that day? All right. What's that one on the right hand side? These are some of the easier ones for sure. That is a warm front. Excellent. All right. Let's just keep moving on. Next one is, what is that on this surface analysis chart? I say this one a lot because everybody, not everybody, a lot of people still get it wrong. So remember, on a surface analysis chart, all the pressure lines are called isobars because the altitude is the iso, is the same. Uh, on a surface analysis chart, remember it's AGL of zero. So it's all the same altitude where they get the pressure lines from. And that's the only reason why at that particular altitude, which is zero, they call it an isobar because it doesn't change. All right. So good deal. Why do I keep saying it? Because people keep getting it wrong in the test, and I want to make sure you guys know the differences between the two, which is important. Uh, so when you're taking your, you know, with the DPE or you're taking a check ride or something like that, you feel pretty confident on being able to know the differences between the two.
All right. The next one is this one. I think this is the last one, guys. And that would be the cold front. We'll talk about a few other things, uh, here in a second as far as surface analysis, and no, almost kind of switch.
All right. So plotting pressure on a surface analysis chart, as you can tell, uh, if you remember a couple lectures ago, I, I gave you guys a station plot where you have to start to learn some of the symbols. And when you see the individual plots, like you can see on this particular chart, uh, you'll be able to identify what they are, temperatures and dew points and weather and, you know, the, the, uh, the ceiling conditions or the cloud conditions, that kind of stuff. So we do have the connecting, uh, areas of pressure that are shown via these lines. Those are isobars. Um, and it will also, if you can tell, uh, it's, it's, you'll see in the next slide, excuse me, a little bit better when it talks to gradients. Now, we, I know we've talked about, uh, pressure gradients, the pressure gradient force, you know, with the tennis ball and and the, and the clipboard, that kind of stuff. Um, you can't really tell on this one because there isn't really a strong area, but you will on the next slide. Um, but being able to understand as these isobars get closer together on these surface analysis charts, of course, you're going to have a large, uh, pressure gradient force, and of course, most likely an increase in winds. Which is pretty good. It'd be great if we had full-blown Santa Anas because I'd be able to bring that chart up, you'd be able to see it, which is kind of neat.
All right. Uh, at this point, it looks like I, I have a note that I queued up a 500 millibar chart, uh, up at the top. This is the National Weather Service. So you can go onto this site. This is actually a pretty cool site, and I have a lot of, on the right hand side, you can see where my, hopefully it shows, uh, my cursor as I kind of go through. If you want a little bit more information or understanding, because I have this, like, this picture, I just stole straight from their site, which, of course, we paid for with our taxes, so I don't have any guilt at all. And, but it has a lot of really interesting, uh, like, if you need to understand isobars versus contour lines, you know, surface analysis charts versus upper air charts, that kind of stuff. Um, you can find all that information here. This is one of the pages, the constant pressure chart. This is kind of neat. It has some meteorology kind of stuff in this, of course, which is what this is made for. So I just want to look at it from an aviator's perspective, right? And in this case, a 500 millibar chart is equivalent to around 18,000 feet. So between 16 and 20, they always round it off to somewhere around 18,000 feet, which is good because that's kind of a transition altitude for aviators also. Um, so we'll go ahead and look at this because it's free from friction, right? From the surface, because it's high enough, uh, you don't have friction being as much of an issue, except for some maybe the taller, like Colorado and stuff. Uh, but still, it's still high enough that it's away from that, that boundary layer, right? So if you look at this chart down at, at the bottom, uh, you'll see the numbers on it. The, the furthest one to the south, it says, uh, 582. That's the pressure. It's a 500 millibar chart. You'll notice that number is higher versus the one, if you go all the way up to the top in the center, where it's 516. So, in other words, as we'll see here in a second, when we talk about contour lines, you'll notice that the pressure, of course, is higher towards the equator, and it's lower, not, not the pressure, but the altitude is lower as you get closer to the poles, because of the air's density. So in this case, we're taking a look at it, we can see the heights, uh, that are associated with it. And what I'd like to put into this, am I able to zoom in? See, I think I can. There we go. Is that a little bit better? I can't see what you guys are seeing. I like, I can see, is my, mine looks great. So sorry, that was bad. Um, so with this, it's kind of neat because you can add the wind barbs on it, which you guys are familiar with. And so you can see as the winds are kind of whipping around that convergence and divergence as it's kind of going through that little trough right there, which is kind of neat. Um, but you can follow, uh, where the winds are going. And at this point, at 18,000 feet, it isn't normally where you'd see like the jet stream, but it is influenced by the jet stream when it gets up to this point, right? Uh, other things you can see on here is surface weather. So one of the things with weather charts when you start looking at them is whenever you see like a big change in direction, right, is typically where you're going to kind of get the nastier weather. So if you superimpose some of the, the, you know, the lows and the highs that are that are shown on the chart, you can see where there's a lot of precipitation, like where the lows are, or as you look down towards the bottom, there's three lows like stacked up on top of each other, right? And it's whipping around, and as it's going by those lows, the wind speed is increasing tremendously, and there's a lot of change in direction, which is causing, uh, some of the rain or some of the more volatile weather, right? And what the meteorologists look at, which we don't really aren't too concerned about, they look at what's called vorticity, or where things happen quickly. So these two red areas that you can see on the chart, if you remove that, that vorticity thing, and you look at those, that same area is where you'll see a lot of the nastier weather.
All right. So, uh, that's one of the ways that you can do it, which works out really well. So 500 millibar chart, and if you need more information, because we start to get into to the higher, or the upper air charts, you might want a little bit more information. This is one of the places you can get it from, which is nice. Let's see. Next.
So isobars and gradients. We've talked about isobars. Uh, this is a really good shot of a really steep gradient. You can see that low that's centered off of where the heck is that? That's like way off, way past Alaska, towards, uh, towards Russia. But anyway, you get the point, right? As there's huge low, steep gradient, and some pretty nasty weather, it's associated with it. As we start to move over to the right from the center to the right, you'll see a high pressure area, and you don't see these very often, but in this case, you can see ridge lines, which is kind of nice. Those are one of the reasons why I brought this one up. Um, in addition to that, off to the right hand side, of course, is what you're going to have to get familiar with, because you will get a quiz, uh, trying to understand that station plot that's on the right hand side. So it's included, uh, all the information that you will most likely get tested on. And, uh, so I kept that in there so you guys can use it as a study guide or whatever you need to to make sure you you excel at. See where the, you know, you see the steep gradient, right? All the lines really close together. Look at the low itself, and I think, I don't know if you can see it or not, I think the low, the lowest number for that low is 972. So this, I was just trying to drive home a point that the numbers don't change a lot for you to get a big difference in pressure. So if we know that the standard pressure is 1013.25, this is like a really low low pressure system, which can create really nasty weather. It's only 972. So remember it, it just, the numbers actually decrease a little and create a large change. So I just wanted to point that out so you can see the difference. Typically, when you see low pressure areas like this in, in the United States, it's usually on the East Coast. When you get those nor'easters, they get some pretty nasty low pressure areas up there. So just, uh, that should help out hopefully a little bit.
Ceiling visibility chart. Another chart that we'll use, especially VFR pilots, to make sure that wherever you're going to be flying is in VFR conditions. Uh, when we bring this up on AWC, you can click on each one of those little green dots and pull up, uh, usually it's local METARs. Um, so, uh, in this case, uh, it's a real-time analysis. Uh, as you look through it, and the best way I can describe it is this chart, the whole chart refreshes every five minutes. So will all the data change on it? No, only something that has been changed, like if a METAR got updated, right, within the last time it was refreshed till now, right, then it will show a change. Otherwise, most of the METARs that are usually posted are, you know, between five and 10 minutes to the top of the hour, on the hour, every time. Um, and if anything gets updated, uh, it will show here, but you won't know until that whole kind of web page, uh, refreshes itself. So it's updated every five minutes. It's totally interactive, so you can click on everything that's in it, in it, which is great. Um, but, uh, it's important for you, if you're going to use this chart to determine whether or not you can fly, it's VFR, but you might want to know a little bit more information. That it might be clear, but there could be Santa Anas, right? So it'll be green, you're like, yeah, good to go. And then realize, you know, gale force winds that you probably are beyond your crosswind capabilities, and it's probably not a good idea for you to fly. So you need to back that up with, uh, the, the actual METARs, terminal layer forecast, AIRMETs, and that kind of stuff.
All right. Um, anyway, so hopefully you guys understand that. So when you look at this, remember this isn't a forecasting, uh, tool. It's just a tool that you can go to get the most current information. And if you wait long enough, like five minutes, uh, it'll refresh, and if anything gets updated, it will normally, the updates happen in like, uh, you know, marginal and IFR, uh, conditions. That's normal where you see most of the, the, the updates.
Constant pressure charts. So now at this point, we're moving from the surface, which was zero feet, right? And now we're going into constant pressure charts. And the big difference between constant pressure charts and surface analysis is the information that you see on it. It looks very similar, but the data is different. And constant pressure charts are also unique because they're, we, there we go, they're also unique because they're in three dimensions. So even, you know, you look at some of the charts, like this is a three-dimensional chart, right? But it's depicting a three-dimensional pattern on the chart. Whether or not it looks three-dimensional, like this one is kind of a three-dimensional view if you did a cross-section of it, looking at it from the side. But the nice thing about this, since you're looking at it from the side, is now you'll be able to actually see the actual contour line, which, so instead of an isobar, which is only at the surface because it's zero degrees, zero degrees, zero feet AGL, a contour line, of course, can move and change. And it moves and changes based upon, uh, temperature and the density of the air that will manipulate the pressure that is shown on the constant pressure chart. So the lines that you will see on a chart, a constant pressure chart, signify a, a, a pressure level, but it also gives you an altitude. Gives you an idea of where it is in relation to the surface, right? So the cooler, more dense air, of course, as it gets colder and more dense, it starts to shrink or contract, and then that, so that constant pressure line will be lower. Think about like the poles where it's colder, that 500 millibar level will be a lot, uh, lower in altitude up towards the poles. And as you get towards the equator, you know, as the air gets warmer, that 500 millibar level of pressure will be at a higher altitude when you get to, get to the equator. So this is kind of what this picture is showing. Uh, so you get an idea of, of when you look at those lines, that's why they're different from isobars, because they actually change, or depicting a change in altitude above the surface, uh, uh, with the, the pressure lines itself. So let's see if we can have a better picture. There we go.
So this, this is kind of giving you a, a, a slice, or a, oh, well, the different slices of the, the, uh, the atmosphere itself. So these are all the different millibars. All right. Uh, I've talked about the 500 millibar a lot. That's around 18,000 feet. And if you go all the way down to the surface, it's somewhere around 1,000 feet, or I'm sorry, 1,000 millibars, right? So as you start to go up in altitude, of course, you, when you look at these charts, it's very important because you'll be able to see different things based upon what you're flying. Uh, it's very important. You'll see as you look at the differences between the upper air versus the surface and how they're interacting. So the height, of course, as you start to go up in altitude, of course, you're going to get different pressures, you're going to get different moisture content, all that that kind of stuff, as the air continues to move, course, from the west coast to the east coast, right? All right. Uh, this shows, of course, the atmosphere in three dimensions, which is shown a little bit better, uh, on the last, uh, the last slide. And the most important part for you to remember is whenever we're talking about constant pressure charts, right now, we want to look at them as contour lines, completely different because of course, in three dimensions. So it follows the contour of the pressure based upon the density of the air. So, uh, as I mentioned before, we use the 18,000, or I'm sorry, the 500 millibar level based upon around 18,000 feet as an average, because if you think about it, if you're flying in a, in a smaller plane, you're going up to a higher altitude in a smaller plane, let's say the low T, it would be applicable. And if you're in a larger, uh, aircraft, maybe a small jet or a big jet, you're going to be flying in the 20s or 30s, right? And so it also is applicable, uh, because if you remember, the 18,000 foot level is about half the pressure of the entire pressure, right? As we go up in altitude, half the pressure of our atmosphere is at 18,000 feet or below, which is pretty crazy. But I do have a bunch of links, which you can't see, but it refers back to that page that I had mentioned earlier, the NOAA page. And the nice thing about that is if you go to it, you can see it, and then you can read it if you need a little bit more information to understand some of these concepts a little bit better, which is kind of nice.
All right. Um, other parts of the constant pressure charts. These, this is one of the newer ones. The older ones were kind of black and white, and they were, you could read them, but they're, they're not as like colorful and easy to read as these. These are kind of a no-brainer, uh, which is great, great. Um, but in this 500 millibar chart, of course, it shows the winds. You can see the rotation, if there is any. In this particular case, there's a big rotation off of the coast of California. Uh, if anybody could tell me if that's a high or low, as we're talking about that, that'd be a pretty, pretty good information to know. And then, of course, you can see the influence at this time, uh, as the, as you get higher up in the atmosphere, it's starting to be influenced by the jet stream, as you can see it, uh, towards Canada, as you see it starting to slope and, you know, twist and turn as it goes from upper Canada down towards the United States. So that is correct. It is a low pressure area. Good job. And you get a gold star or something, but that is correct. So that's nice though, to be able to look at some of these charts and figure out where the low pressure area is. And, uh, and you'd also be able to figure out, just by looking at this picture, where's where's a headwind going to be as I start to fly, uh, as I fly from California and I go east, of course, it's going to be a crosswind. So performance-wise, knowing where the highs and lows are can be pretty beneficial, right? So I mean, it's a headwind, basically, and then all of a sudden it turns into a tailwind, which is pretty cool. So, uh, it helps you just visualize where the high and low pressure areas are, and then you can compare it to a surface analysis chart and see what the differences are.
All right. So here's a better shot of the, uh, the 500 millibar chart, a little bit more of a closeup, so you can see. And then this is where another demonstration of going from the equator up to the poles, and you can see a decrease as the contour lines get closer to the poles, the 500 millibar level gets lower in altitude as it starts to go up, which is kind of cool. So I think I took a, there you go, there's a picture of it. So I circled the 500 millibar chart. So obviously, it's not going to say 500 the whole way, uh, because it is going to depict lower pressure areas as it starts to go. But generally speaking, it's the 500 millibar, it's a depiction of 500 millibars, uh, from the equator, in this case, all the way up to the poles, which is kind of neat.
All right. So, uh, other things that are really important for us to understand are these three or four charts. One's custom, so you know, I'll show you where I did it, which is kind of neat. Um, and then you can, I think it was, it's free, so you can do that also. Um, but there's four different charts I wanted to show you, mainly because you get a lot of information from them, and you can use them like as your pre-flight planning, or if it's that day of your flight, let's say you're going to do a longer cross country or something, this, these are some pretty, uh, good charts to use, uh, to get information from. So we'll go through the overview of these slides, and we'll start off with the, the radar summary. Radar summaries are awesome. So if you're ready to go, and you just want to take a look at whether or not it's, it's going to be raining in the area that you're going to be flying, uh, that's really important. And then also, you want to know, of course, if there's any thunderstorms, that'd be pretty interesting. So in this case, you can see both just rain and areas of thunderstorm. And what you'll see in the charts that I'm going to be showing you, they're all on the same day, day when I pulled all these charts and and created the custom chart and stuff, um, so they're all related. So as we start to look at different views of the same type of weather and how you can get some more information from it, uh, in this case, we can see a huge squall line that's going up straight up from Texas. Uh, this is typically where you'd see a lot of those tornadoes that those people are chasing, which is fairly interesting. The nice thing about the radar, uh, the big Doppler radar systems, which we'll talk about here in a minute, uh, you can see the directions, those arrow directions where it gives you, not only has vorticity, which is the, the twisting of a thunderstorm, uh, that that is, uh, indicated by the word "miso," "miso" means the twisting part. It also gives you the velocity or the direction, uh, that the, the storm is moving. So right. And so if you were flying your plane, you go, where is this thing going? You can just look at the arrows and go, okay, that works out pretty good. Uh, a lot of the apps that we have today, Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight, also give you that, and it's a little bit more real-time, as if, if it's all possible. But remember, when we're looking at radar returns, especially uplink stuff, and I just want to, I'll say it more than once, uh, that is not real-time. The only real-time radar returns you'll ever get at this point, uh, is from an actual radar unit on the aircraft itself. That's the only time you'll get something, uh, real-time. Uh, other than that, there is a delay. Think about it, it's, it's kind of like when a picture is taken and then it's uploaded, so there's a gap, there's a time gap. So when you're flying in kind of crappy conditions, you don't want any time gap. You want to know exactly what's in front of you because you're actually making decisions as you're flying and the direction you need to go. So no lag, you don't want any lag at all. Anyway, so the radar summary is great, especially for planning, to be able to figure out which way to go. And then, um, oh, that's that's some of the most important stuff. And this one, it also shows you the tops. Tops when it comes to radar, uh, the radar has to get a return. So we'll talk about how radar works in a second. But essentially, radar returns based upon the precipitation that is reflected from it. So in that case, if you get high enough in, think of like a thunderstorm, right? So the thunderstorm gets really high, it gets to a point where it kind of gets through that icing layer, and so the top part of the actual storm, uh, is kind of icy and crystally and stuff, right? So when radar hits it, it just, just goes right through it, right? It doesn't bounce back to the radar to tell you that anything's there because there's really no precipitation or anything to bounce back. So the tops and the numbers that you see, uh, you can see, you know, 160, 360, 230. If you're looking at that squall line, those are the tops of the thunderheads, uh, as that squall line continues to move across. You can see down towards the bottom part of Texas where it's highlighted, a 510, that's a 51,000 foot thunderstorm, which is pretty nasty, right? Uh, during the winter, though, traditionally, those, those tops will be lower, because the air generally speaking is cooler.
So, let's see. Oh, so this is kind of neat. So how do you navigate when you start to get this really crappy weather? What happens to air traffic? Uh, as far as trying to get into the airport? So this is an Atlanta Hartsfield picture or little mini video. There's no sound to it, but it is a visual kind of thing. So what you're going to see is how, how they can, uh, maneuver the traffic around the thunderstorms. And you could also see who are some of the folks that decide, hey, I'm going this way. And once one or two of them do it, you'll see all the rest of them start to follow. So let me go ahead and play this so you can watch it. Uh, and you can see how they go through not only getting into the airport, but as these, uh, air mass thunderstorms start to build up, you'll be able to see them go into holding patterns because they can't get in right away because, because of the proximity of the thunderstorms, or there's too much traffic coming from a particular area. So they'll hold you, um, but then once that opens up, right, you'll see them all start to depart the holding pattern and start to come into the airport. So pretty, pretty eye-opening stuff. It's kind of neat for, so you could see by the end of the day, of course, you know, a lot of that energy went away and thunderstorms started to dissipate, you know, was back to to business as usual. But that's a super busy airport, and you can tell, uh, the controllers do a really good job in communicating not only with the pilots, uh, either putting them in holding patterns or delaying their arrival based upon where they predict some of these storms to go. So if they have a bunch of people coming from the East Coast, coming down towards Atlanta, they might hold them, uh, at the airport before they depart, uh, for a little bit to go ahead and reel and and let some of those storms start to pass, and they'll release them later. So they'll do ground stops. So there's all sorts of tools that air traffic control has in order to regulate the traffic that goes into some of these really, really busy hubs. And, uh, it's kind of neat how everybody works together.
Uh, I do have one additional video. This one has sound, which is kind of nice. This one's put out by the National Air Traffic, uh, was it, National Air Traffic Control Services? So this is in the UK. It's kind of like the FAA in the UK, but they separate out their stuff. So ours is ATC, theirs is the National Air Traffic, uh, ORNS and ATS, right? Um, this is kind of neat. So when we watch, when you watch this video, look in the, uh, what's the upper, upper left-hand side of the screen, and it will start to show the winds. So as the winds start to change, you'll see how they change, uh, the runways in which they're landing out, and all that kind of good stuff. So try to visualize if you were flying a plane. There are different color tracks that they use in this video, which show you the differences between a normal flight, a delayed flight, and a diverted flight based upon the weather. And I think it lists it in, in the icons. So it's kind of neat.
Unpredictable weather is one of the most challenging things for air traffic controllers to deal with. The southeast of England is one of the busiest and most complex areas of airspace in the world to manage. This day from 2014 shows how a severe storm can add to that challenge. Already a day of strong winds and reduced landing rates, London's airborne holding stacks are full of aircraft waiting to land. At 3:00 PM, the wind suddenly changes direction and increases in strength, requiring a break in Heathrow arrivals to change the landing direction. As more aircraft arrive from Europe, the airspace becomes increasingly bigger, busy. New holding stacks open as the skies become full of circling aircraft. By now, delays are touching almost two hours, with many pilots choosing to abort their landings and divert to other airports. Every diversion requires special attention and coordination to create new bespoke flight plans. Thanks to the teamwork of everyone involved, every aircraft landed safely and without a single loss of separation, despite it being one of the worst days of weather in recent years.
So that's pretty interesting to be able to see how air traffic control deals with not only weather but wind, uh, which is, which is pretty awesome. Um, anyway, so as we continue forward, you look at, uh, some of the different charts that we have to look at. This one's called the 12-hour prognostic chart, which I think I mentioned prognostic charts before, a 12 and a 24-hour. This is just another depiction of it. In this case, it shows a variety of different, you know, highs and lows and troughs, that kind of stuff. Um, but it also includes, uh, occlusions, which will be the purple part. Uh, I'll show you a better occlusion here on the next slide, which is kind of nice. Um, and then, of course, it shows, uh, millibars and, and, uh, of course, gradients. You can see probably the largest gradient up in Canada, uh, as far as going from that high door down towards the low. Um, but that's just another view. In this particular case, it's a 12-hour prognostic with radar superimposed on top of it.
Another one is called Weather Underground, if you guys have ever used that one before. Uh, I think they have a free version of it. And in this case, uh, I like this chart because it gives you all the temperatures. So it shows the fronts on, in addition to the temperatures. So it helps you visualize a little bit better, uh, where the, you know, like if you look at Texas, as an example, uh, if you look at the kind of the lower right, you'll see a unique, if there's a low right in the middle, where you see the blue, red, and purple lines come together. Uh, in this case, originally, uh, the low was located right in the center, but as that cold front continued to catch up with the warm front, it became occluded. In other words, it pushed some of that air up into the upper atmosphere. And as it occludes, the low and the low pressure area actually slides up that occlusion, and you can see it all the way to the north of that, all those three systems. But what you can see on this chart is you can see, if you look at the cold front, you look at the air that's behind it, and you can tell that temperature-wise, it's obviously colder than any of the other temperatures in front of the cold front. And behind the warm front is where you would find the warmer temperatures. So think of the gulf, right? So there's the gulf, lot of humidity, you know, warmer temperatures, that makes a lot of sense, right? Right. And then if you look in front of the warm front, or just to the north of the warm front, you have cooler temperatures. So between these three different air masses, because they're completely separate from each other, you have colder temperatures, warmer temperatures, and cooler temperatures. And that's what happens when you get an occlusion, you get three different air masses, uh, on, right next to each other, and then another one that's kind of been pushed up over the top.
All right. Uh, so that's one of the nice things that you can see on charts like this. Uh, there's more information on the left-hand side that doesn't have any data, so I can't really use that. Um, and then, of course, you can see the differences as you look at the low that's above it, uh, towards the top of the United States with that low. You see a cold front coming off of it, a warm front, and then it goes into a stationary front past that.
And you notice the stationary front. There's not a huge difference in temperatures between the two, but there is colder air right to the north versus in the center, right? So on that stationary front, and if you look at where the arrows on that stationary front are pointing for the cold temperatures, right? It's pointing towards the south, right? So you can see the colder air that is up towards Canada and going down towards the center of the United States. You can see the direction that if that becomes a stationary front starts to move, that's the area or the place where the cold front would start to kind of activate or whatever as it starts to move down, right? So hopefully that helps you visualize stuff a little bit better.
Uh, another chart that you can have if you want to create one. Uh, this is, this one's, uh, from flightflightplan.com. And so you can kind of go onto this site, you create custom, uh, charts. This one's pretty cool because don't forget, these are all the same day, uh, which is nice. So you can see, uh, in Texas where that squall line was located. You can see both the cold front, the stationary front, and then that occlusion, right? That kind of goes off to the left as it starts to go north. And you can see the direction, uh, in which the, uh, wind is blowing and pushing that storm in that direction. So you have pressure coming in from from the west towards that low, and then you have the air that's being pushed up north. And then that, if you remember the arrows pointing, that's basically the direction that storm is going to be moving. If you look off to the right-hand side, of course, we can see the arrows, the way they're, they're rotating. Uh, these aren't wind barbs, of course, they're arrows because that's the way I customized it. And, uh, the velocity changes are based upon colors. So you can see that down at the bottom, um, and as it, you know, it gives you, uh, what the different colors mean and how fast the air is is traveling. But you can also see over the that like that that handle of, um, Florida. You can see a rotation, uh, that shows a, a high-pressure area as it's rotating clockwise, uh, as it starts to move. So this low won't go towards the high because we know that the high pressure is kind of pushing it away. So in this case, because of where the winds are coming from, that low doesn't have any other choice but to go around that high, which is kind of neat. So you can visualize some of that stuff, uh, just by looking at slides like this.
Uh, if you want to have a better idea, I pulled, I created this one from ForeFlight. And what this one is, is it shows what's called CONUS, or the entire United States. And it shows a couple different things. So if I'm correct, I think the first one is a surface analysis chart, and the next one is going to be the upper air, the jet stream. So in this case, we can see, uh, if you look at the Houston area, this isn't the same day as the the chart, sorry about that, this was a different day. Um, but this was great because it really showed the differences between surface winds and direction and the upper air. So you see two lows that are connected with a cold front. So when you're looking at a chart like this, you have to visualize where the weather is going to be, right? So in this case, we have all that air that's traveling up from the Gulf of Mexico, which is warm and moist, and it crosses over a cold front. And so what's behind a cold front? Colder air. And what happens to moisture when it gets colder? It becomes precipitation, right? So that's where you can see all this warm, moist air going across a cold front and all of a sudden, boom, you have a bunch of weather, which is pretty gnarly. So this, I think, will activate, get a better shot of that. So, and, and you have to remember this is a surface chart, so this is showing all the stuff that's happening at the surface. You can see the direction, uh, where everything is moving as far as the air as it crosses over the front into colder air and starts to create precipitation.
So if we were to take this and now I want to look at the upper air chart, right? So we'll go ahead and switch it. And this is the upper air. Let me activate this. And what you'll see is the wind velocity goes up quite a bit. So on the other one, a lot of the air was traveling directly north, right? So, but in an upper air chart, you notice that there's also that, uh, the equatorial jet stream that starts to come up. You can see it kind of whipping up there. Uh, so it's also pushing the air in the upper air, uh, towards the same direction because it's going towards the low, but the velocity has increased quite a bit. So because of that, uh, it's creating even more weather, uh, as you go up higher in the atmosphere. So this just helps you look at, when you look at two different types, you look at the surface and you look at the upper air and how they interact with each other, right? Uh, you can create some pretty, pretty gnarly, um, pretty gnarly weather. Um, you can also tell that it dissipates, right? So the, all that moisture comes up and forms and creates a bunch of nasty weather. And you think, well, why does the storm go away? If you look at the jet stream at the top and it starts to drop down from Canada, that's a lot of cooler air that's coming down. It doesn't have a lot of moisture, but, uh, because of it, it creates more of a stability, right? Because remember that warm, moist air came in and hit some cold air, created precipitation and instability. And when you have cooler air coming down, it kind of, a lot of that starts to go away. So just by looking at these different charts, you have a better idea of what kind of stuff you can discern just by looking at some of these charts.
Graphic Area Forecast. Uh, this is, this is probably one of the best charts that you'll use on AWC. And, uh, as I'll look at, I'll show it to you here in a second as we work through this. Um, but this, what I've done here, instead of going through all the different listings of the things that are there, uh, you can just look at the left. It has quite a bit of information, which I'm going to continue on the next slide. Uh, it's jam-packed with stuff. And the neat thing is about it is you can manipulate the data. So as we go to the next one, gives you a little bit more information about what you can find in the GFA with the GFA tool. Um, but the neat thing about this one is like at the top, you can see you can change the time, uh, with the slider on the left-hand side. You can change the altitude, uh, that you want to manipulate. To say, if you're flying, in this case, I selected 9,000. So this, let's say that's what you're flying at. So all the data that you're going to look up also has that attached to it. And this is also the only chart on the GFA or the the graphical area forecast that has, if you look in the upper right-hand side, it says show flight plan, where you can actually take a flight plan. It's real simple, right? Point A to point B. So it doesn't follow routes or anything. Uh, but just so you get a general idea, is I'm going to fly from here and I'm going to go to here, right? Just a direct line. And it will show you things along the way. So if you bring up, let's say a forecast chart, and you want to see what the forecasts are, you can click on those forecasts along the way to kind of have a better idea of what the weather's going to be like. Because remember, those forecast areas are only five statute miles, right? They're not very big. So if you can click on a few of them along the way, you get a better idea. Um, when it comes to what the weather's like at those particular airports, and if you might go into icing conditions, right? Like that one guy in the video. Because you can click on those and see what the weather is, you can find the VFR weather just by doing that. So, uh, it's a lot more visual, it's a lot, makes planning a lot easier. And creating an A, B, and C plan, uh, you know, before, before you fly is, is pretty handy with a tool like this.
Uh, if I have time towards the end, uh, we're kind of rolling in this. This has taken a little bit longer, uh, than I anticipated. But, uh, I'm more than happy to to go through, uh, the using of this tool. Let's just see how it kind of plays out as far as time. So chart-wise, uh, we leave the charts now and we go into understanding radar a little bit better. Uh, we've shown radar, uh, superimposed on some of these charts, which is very handy. But understanding what radar is and how it works, uh, makes us understand what we're looking at a little bit easier to deal with. So this is an RD88, uh, uh, radar, uh, tower. Uh, this was the one that's found on Saddleback Mountain, which is local, uh, to John Wayne Airport. Most of the, uh, weather, you know, like Channel 7, Channel 4, all the, all the networks and stuff, they'll use this for the LA Basin, uh, because this is kind of the big, uh, Doppler radar. And there's another one a little bit north they can use also. Uh, but you can get a ton of data just from this particular one. So in this case, we look at this, obviously, it's a pretty simple device for the most part. It's a big ball on top of this scaffolding. And I'd hate to be the guy, you know, there's no elevator. So we do a lot of steps that day to get to the top to get inside. And you can see inside this with this picture that I threw up of, uh, what it looks like when, uh, this radar, uh, starts to whip around and starts to send out its signal to try and find out what's out there, uh, which is kind of neat. So, uh, the radio, uh, the radio energy is emitted from, uh, this, this object or the antenna as it starts to whip around. And also, you can't really see, but the radar just doesn't stay in one position. So it'll rotate around, but it also has the ability of tilting up, right? So of course, there's going to be limitations. They don't really want to tilt it down because then you just get, you know, ground returns, right? So you can go up in the atmosphere, which is what we care about. And as it starts to whip around, so it'll whip around, it'll raise up a little bit more or tilt up, go around again, tilt up again, and keep going until it gets a more comprehensive view, which is what we end up getting, uh, when we, we look up the, the weather returns, which is kind of neat.
So when the radar signal goes out, see, you have a better picture here. When, see if I can get this thing to work, there we go. So when the radio s, radio signal goes out, uh, it goes out, it hits an object, and then it comes back. So this is an old analog log radar, uh, that you see at the top, which is depicting, but the idea is similar. Um, but it's just a matter of how much energy do I get back? So if I send out a radio signal and then, or the radar signal, and then it bounces back, uh, if it all bounces back, that essentially means that you kind of hit a, let's say, a cement wall, right? Because it went out and all that energy came right back to the, it, it received it all back. So of course, there aren't big walls, hopefully. But we, if you had a line of thunderstorms, right? All that energy would go out by the radar, and then a lot of that energy would come back, and it would be depicted as a big thunderstorm. So it would be able to see that there are problems with analog radar, which is the reason why they're falling out of favor. And it's going now towards Doppler because there's less dispersement of the radar waves. So you can tell as it hits the object, a lot of it bounces away, uh, away from the, uh, the, the unit itself. And in this case, we're showing the lower one is Doppler. And Doppler sends out pulses, and so they're very direct. And the neat thing about Doppler is it gives you very precise information. And it's not really affected as much by the strength of the storms in which it's trying to get a return from. So whenever you look at some of the radar, the old school radars, didn't have enough power to go through the storms and come back. Doppler does, which is kind of neat. So we'll look at a picture here in a second. Uh, but this is basically the differences between the two. Is one is a solid, uh, in and out kind of thing as far as the energy is concerned. And a Doppler is a pulse, is the difference.
Uh, there is a, uh, Garmin does have what's called a GWX 75, uh, which is a new general aviation Doppler radar system. You can install in your aircraft. So if you have a spare, I don't know, probably 75 grand or something, you can put one of those bad boys in your, in your plane. And you can get some cool returns. In this case, I wanted to show you the differences between the two. So, uh, on the left-hand side, that's the aircraft's digital radar. So that's an actual onboard radar system on this aircraft. And on the right-hand side is the multifunction display, which is showing Uplink Doppler radar. So this is the difference between, you know, digital radar, uh, and Doppler itself. Doppler, as you can tell, gives you a comprehensive view because it's Uplink. It shows you the whole picture of what the weather's like, uh, versus what you see when you're using the actual radar in the aircraft, where it just gives you kind of a little swath of where you're flying. Now, it's hard to discern this initially because the, uh, the pilot's flight display shows the track in which the aircraft is flying. And so it only wants to look at what's in front of it because that's the, the direction you're flying, right? Versus the multifunction display on the right, where it actually shows a North up position. So your track is actually going from the left to the right. So you have to kind of visualize, uh, on the right-hand side when you're looking at the Doppler, you can see the that cell that's straight in front of the aircraft is also depicted on both of them. So it may take a couple seconds for you to see the differences between the two. But there's a side by side between a regular onboard radar versus a Doppler, which gives you a more comprehensive view, right?
All right, so, uh, to see what it looks like inside an RD88 or some of the bigger radars, uh, let's see, there we go. Uh, we have a short video, which is kind of nice. This is in Guam. And, uh, they'll give you a little bit more information about how that works, which is neat.
Tucked behind the back roads of Guam, just south of Anderson Air Force Base, stands a lone tall radar tower operated by just three Airmen from the 36 Communications Squadron. It's what they call the NEXRAD Doppler radar. The NEXRAD Radar is the next generation weather radar used here on Anderson. Uh, it provides products to Anderson-based weather, the FAA, National Weather Service, and also HICOM gets a feed from our radar site. The NEXRAD Doppler radar system is a network of high-resolution weather radars operated by the National Weather Service. The NEXRAD detects precipitation, atmospheric movement, or wind by shooting radio frequencies out into the air. How the, uh, NEXRAD radar works is we generate pulsed RF, which shoots out of the antenna, which will then bounce off of a cloud and then receive back into the same antenna it transmitted from. Um, we were then processed and then send out to all of our users. Although satellites work for similar purpose, the NEXRAD radar provides a more in-depth look into the atmosphere. Satellite coverage will give you an aerial view of the cloud coverage in the area. Uh, the difference in between it and radar is radar gives you a much more detailed, uh, internal look of the cloud, so you can actually see what's going on inside it. Without that radar coverage, weather forecasting is much more limited, which in turn directly affects Anderson's high operational flying missions. It's important to have it up with all of the air traffic that we have coming in and out of Guam International Airport, plus all of the training missions and exercises that we run here from Anderson, especially in certain circumstances where you're flying stealth missions and things like that. Some of those airplanes won't actually fly without radar coverage. Up the NEXRAD is the only weather radar within the Marianas Islands. It serves the Anderson mission while also providing the Pacific region a detailed look into Guam skies. Reporting for Anderson Air Force Base, I'm Senior Airman Maro Whow.
All right, so if you notice that, uh, looks very similar to the one that's, uh, out in between like, uh, Corona and Irvine at the, on the ridge, which is kind of neat. So if you ever fly towards Corona or Chino, uh, you can pass like right by this thing, which is kind of pretty awesome. But don't get too close, though. Uh, the WSR, that's what we just looked at, the 88s. Uh, you can tell this is where the coverage is in the United States. They're pretty much all over the place, which is nice, because especially for flight planning, to be able to see exactly what's going on out there before you take off is really important. Uh, so there's, there's 159 sites, which is pretty big. Uh, as you can tell that they rotate around, which I already talked about. They tilt, uh, between five and 14. It just depends on how bad the weather is. So in other words, the, the clearer days that, uh, when it's, when the thing is turning around, it starts to slow its sweep on clearer days, so it can get a more detailed picture because there's less, uh, of that data coming back. And then on the, I guess you say the crappier days, when you have a lot of weather, all right, it speeds up. So not only can it turn and get a picture in one rotation, it needs to continue to tilt, uh, to be able to see how big the storm is as it starts to move up. And also, one of the things that you can get, uh, in addition with Doppler radar is you can get direction. So that's where you get that arrow that told you the direction the storms are going. So as the radar starts to tilt up, it can see the differences between the, the winds down at the bottom of the thunderstorm, uh, or a squall line, or whatever it's looking at, and then of course the tops, because they might be moving in a, a different direction, or one might be moving a little faster than the other. So it gets an idea of how, how quickly that whole thing will start to move, which is pretty, pretty cool. You can tell at the bottom, it says takes four to 11 minutes to get a complete image. So as it whips around and it starts to do its tilt action, right? It can take a while before it completes that. When it completes that, then it goes through the process. If we have the ability, like 380 SB in, we can start to upload that stuff into our aircraft to be able to use it. Uh, you can also do that through XM radio. They have a similar, uh, feature. Um, I think XM is a, it's a subscription every month versus ADSB, where you buy the unit, whatever it is, you spend $700 bucks, or I think as low as $100 bucks for ForeFlight has a small little one that you can get the weather from. Um, and then once you buy that unit, the ADSB information is free. So because we've already paid for that as taxpayers, which is kind of nice. You just need to find that unit and purchase that unit so you can receive that information. It's pretty much as simple as that. Anyway, the important thing is to remember that there is a delay for uploaded stuff. So you cannot fly real-time with uploaded stuff. You can only kind of use it as strategy, uh, to get a general idea of where you're going to fly. But when you're flying in weather, you want, in, in the aircraft, you want radar, uh, to be more specific if you're flying in that kind of weather.
Terminal Doppler. Uh, this is a little bit different. Same idea, but the cool thing about these is they're very precise. They're very powerful. But they're, they're located on the ground in the areas in which they have kind of the nastiest weather. So I know I had mentioned the Delta 191 flight where there was wind shear associated with it, because of all the, all the problems that are associated with, uh, thunderstorms. They have one not only there, which is why they started coming up with TDWR radar, but they have it in all the other different airports where they have the same kind of issues with wind shear or really bad weather. You know, you see like Denver and a lot of places back East, down in Florida, where they get all those nasty thunderstorms, right? Uh, it's pretty important for them to place those in the areas where, you know, potential, um, you know, really bad weather as far as aviation's concerned. So, uh, these are kind of neat. So there's only 45 of them. I double-checked it before, uh, just to make sure my slide was current. They haven't changed the data, so there's still only 45. Now, the military has some of their own, uh, which I don't think is included in these. Um, but the neat thing is, is they're just more precise. So you can look that up. Obviously, I gave you a reference down at the bottom at noaa.gov, if you want to learn a little bit more about, uh, how these started and what their capabilities are. They can do quite a bit, and they keep upgrading them, uh, to give us even more information, which is pretty awesome.
NEXRAD. So, uh, additional NEXRAD components would be the radar coded message. So this is one of those, and I gave you a reference down the bottom, uh, if you have that book, which is nice. But in this case, it shows the radar, the radar patterns or or the precipitation returns in addition to the tops of the storms and the the chart, the direction in which that storm is moving by showing you, with the wind bars, which is kind of nice. Um, in this case, the, the Next Generation, uh, uh, radar network is nice because it's now going to slowly start to integrate with not only ATC, not only the pilots, but ATC and, uh, a lot of the flight planning that goes along with going from point A to point B, especially international, because all this stuff, they're going to start linking all this information to be able to share it worldwide. So I mean, if you think about it, if you're flying a like a 747 from Los Angeles to London, right? Wouldn't you, it would be nice if they all share shared information, you know, because they have different ATC systems, right? Well, with NextGen, and they have a different one with a different name over in Europe, but the same idea, when they start to work together, which is great, which they're integrating right now, you can actually potentially put a ground stop on an international flight before it even takes off. Or even better, they can actually, while you're en route, change your route, you know, and they can, they can just push that straight into the airplane, which is kind of neat. They can do that today, which is nice.
Uh, there are two different reflectivities. So there's base and composite base reflectivity. Essentially, is one swoop of the radar, kind of gives you a snapshot of what's happening. So you can get instant gratification, so to say. And then there's the composite, which is all the different slices as it tilts, uh, which is generally speaking what you're looking for, uh, as a pilot, because you, you want to have not just a snapshot, you want to know what the whole thing is doing, which is really important. Uh, the radar summary charts in this particular case gets released every half an hour because things change so fast. And then you can tell when it gets, uh, released at 15 and 45 past every hour. So keep checking back on something like this if you're really concerned about, let's say, the precipitation or some storms, uh, that are in the area of which you're planning.
So, uh, let's see, as we move past, uh, NEXRAD radar, we'll get into pilot reports. So I know I had mentioned pilot reports before, and let's get into, uh, we don't have to look at the form itself because we already talked about that. But here's when you, when you pull up PIREPs on AWC, this is kind of the picture you'll get. So you see the symbols associated with different types of turbulence, but you also see like icing and turbulence. No turbulence, right? So that circle with a slash means none, right? And then if you click on one of those individual ones, you'll get the PIREP, which is kind of neat. It gives you all the, the basic information, especially for VFR, you want cloud cover and the flight level. So what's this person flying at? In this case, sky clear. It tells you where the person was when they, they did the report. They said they were over that OV, says they're over, and it's usually an indication of a field or or some kind of navigational fix, like a VOR or something like that, over the top of something. Then it says, uh, the time that it was issued and the flight level. In this case, 5,000, and it was an Airbus, so that's 50,000 feet. Looks like it was an Airbus 330-6, and it shows the sky is clear at that altitude. You, that's probably what you're going to get. Um, the legend down at the bottom, don't forget those. If you have a legend, make sure you take advantage of that. You can see all the different types of turbulence that's listed on the left versus the right, where it starts to talk about icing. All right, so those are the big differences between the two.
So this is a PIREP. So in other words, the pilot gave this information to a controller or flight service. I'll select controller, but in this case, remember when I was talking about the airplanes and how they're capable of automatically sending in weather information, this is it. And it's called an ACARS, and the neat thing about it is it gives you all the information that you would want to have in a PIREP. Uh, and it does it automatically. The, the, the crew doesn't have to do anything. It just gets, uh, projected out because all the sensors on the plane. So as far as PIREPs are concerned, uh, I use this, this, uh, chicken wings cartoon to just remind you that, you know, if it's unexpected weather that you didn't plan on getting, give a PIREP to let everybody know. Because everybody else is, let's say, planning a similar flight, you know, they might all get the same information you have, and then take off and then find out, well, that's not really what it's like when they're flying. So, you know, give a PIREP so you can receive a PIREP while you're flying ahead of time, especially icing. Because a lot of times when you get icing reports, they won't necessarily say there's known icing. And known icing is can only be reported when someone says, I have icing on my aircraft. So if there's a forecast for icing, that's not known icing. It's similar to that 172 guy that flew his plane when he did his, his, you know, his flight planning. Well, no one had flown through there and gotten icing or received icing, and they didn't report that they were in icing conditions. There could be people that flew in icing conditions, didn't say anything because they're in a jet, you know, I mean, if I had to report every time I got icing in a jet, that'd be insane. So, you know, a lot of times some of that stuff doesn't come out. But in the case of this guy, where he's flying in icing conditions, you really want to know that because most of the people at that altitude won't have icing equipment. So, you know, if you can always participate, which is nice.
Uh, other things, uh, I don't know if you guys can see this or not. Uh, sometimes it's a little frustrating. This cartoon's been around for quite a while. Just kind of nice when it comes to turbulence. And so if you're ever flying with passengers in the back, you can have a little bit of fun. Uh, other things, if you're a drone pilot, this is important to, uh, know that, uh, you know, sometimes they can get excited based upon what they're doing. If you are a parent, uh, you might like this as far as, you know, trying to figure out, you know, what to do with your child if they're misbehaving and you're a pilot, need you to go to work, just go ahead and shove them on the front of the aircraft. And then the last but not least is my one of my favorite pictures. If anybody can figure out why I personally would never fly this plane, I don't know if you could figure that out. So if you understand the letters at the back, that's probably a, it's not a plane I'd probably want to fly. Not an N number, that's for sure.
All right, so the last thing I'll leave you with, of course, is points to remember. Moisture, you need moisture in order for clouds to form to go IMC, right? Temperature, think about warmer to colder, and its ability to hold moisture and not hold moisture. Warmer holds more moisture, colder air holds less moisture or less water vapor. Then, of course, the speed, the speed in which a frontal air mass is moving, will create, generally speaking, more instability. The faster it moves, and the more, especially cold fronts, as they push a lot of that air mass that's in front of them out of the way, and it has to kind of move out of the way, and it usually generates a lot of instability. So there you go. There's the end. Leave you with this Hawkeye, which is kind of neat. They launch these things off aircraft carriers. And there's that like radar in the sky. So that's how it's related because it's a radar plane. So anyway, just a reminder to go ahead and make sure you study for the symbols quiz and then go ahead and take that. And, uh, I wish everybody good luck.