April 2025 EZNews

Hello and thank you for taking the time to read the 48th issue of EZNews!

We value those members who have chosen to enable automatic renewal of their EZWxBrief membership on a monthly basis. If you haven't done so, please sign in and visit the User Profile page (see right) and tap or click on the Renew button on this page. By doing this, you can establish your monthly renewal with a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover credit card. This ensures that you continue to enjoy the simplicity of EZWxBrief.

Advanced Weather Essentials for Pilots recordings are on sale!

If you were not able to attend the live Advanced Weather Essentials for Pilots class that finished on March 24th, you now have the option to purchase access to all ten recordings from this live 10-week class. Order today to save $50. The Summary Guide that you will download upon purchase is a PDF file and includes the following -

Table of contents
Hyperlinks to the ten unlisted YouTube video recordings of each class
Hyperlinks to a PDF containing the slides for each class

Access to the content provided is strictly for your personal use. Please do not share this PDF or any of its contents or post it online. We appreciate your cooperation. This offer is available for a limited time and ends on April 15, 2025.

Purchase now >>>

Coming to SUN 'N FUN this year?

EZWxBrief won't have a vendor booth this year at SUN 'N FUN, but you can catch a couple of presentations by Dr. Scott Dennstaedt on Thursday, April 3rd if you are attending. He will host a presentation on Weather avoidance: Protecting the margins in the first floor cafeteria room (CFAA-01) at 10 am and 5 Things you must know about datalink weather at the AOPA Pavilion at 12 pm. You may also find him hanging out at the SiriusXM booth. Please stop by and say hello. Hope to see you there!

Addition of Most Probable Peak Intensity Tags to the SPC Mesoscale Discussions

On March 15, 2025, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) added the “Most Probable Peak Intensity” information for tornado intensity, hail size, and thunderstorm-related wind speeds to their Mesoscale Discussions (MCDs). SPC issues MCDs to convey to contiguous United States NWS Weather Forecast Offices, the operational weather enterprise, the public, media, emergency managers, and other specialized users, the location and current meteorological reasoning for short-term hazardous weather concerns associated with convective weather. The addition of “Most Probable Peak Intensity” information will quantify the expected magnitude of thunderstorm hazards, allowing for improved decision making and enhancing the value of thunderstorm hazard intensity information.

At the end of the MCD text you will see these listed such as the examples below.

MOST PROBABLE PEAK TORNADO INTENSITY…85-115 MPH

MOST PROBABLE PEAK WIND GUST…55-70 MPH

MOST PROBABLE PEAK HAIL SIZE…1.00-1.75 INCHES

Information regarding the Most Probable Peak Intensity for severe thunderstorm hazards is currently conveyed through the MCD text and in the graphic that accompanies each MCD issuance. The addition of tag lines at the end of the MCD will allow for decoding and graphical display by downstream software, further enhancing the value of thunderstorm hazard intensity information. When a hazard (e.g., hail) is not expected to approach or exceed severe levels, that hazard is omitted from the tag line section. The intensity bins used for each hazard are:

Two 1-on-1 training subscription plans with lower annual prices!

Does weather perplex you? Are you interested in taking your aviation weather knowledge to a new level? Perhaps you want to review the weather before you depart on your next cross-country flight? Then you may want to do purchase a 12-month online training plan where an expert can help you can improve your weather briefing skills. You have two subscription plan options. You can purchase a plan for five 60-minute sessions or five 30-minute sessions at a cost of $349 and $199, respectively. And if you prefer not to purchase one of these two plans, you can always book a single 60-minute or 30-minute session instead.

Sessions can be booked with Dr. Scott Dennstaedt Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. eastern time. As a seasoned flight instructor for the last 25 years and meteorologist for the last 45 years, Scott has the unique qualifications to teach you how to minimize your exposure to adverse weather. At the present time there is no availability for evening sessions or on weekends/holidays. Blackout times will apply during some aviation events (e.g., AirVenture). See this post for more information on how to purchase and redeem your sessions for these two annual subscription plans.

The NWS has suspended launching radiosondes at many upper-air sites in the U.S.

With the recent government staffing cuts throughout the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that includes the National Weather Service (NWS), there has been a need to indefinitely suspend or reduce radiosonde launches at many upper-air stations throughout the U.S. So far a total of 14 out of 83 sites now have partial or no launches. This includes upper-air sites at Kotzebue, Alaska, Gray, Maine, Albany, New York, Omaha, Nebraska, Rapid City, South Dakota, Aberdeen, South Dakota, Gaylord, Michigan, Grand Junction, Colorado, Green Bay, Wisconsin, North Platte, Nebraska, and Riverton, Wyoming. Further staffing cuts and early retirements will undoubtedly cause more suspensions or reductions to occur in the coming months.

The NWS offices in Boulder, Colorado and Tallahassee, Florida aren't launching balloons because of a nationwide helium shortage, and the weather balloon facility on Morris Island in Chatham, Massachusetts has suspended launches because the facility has been closed due to coastal erosion.

Radiosondes are essential because they provide vital data from the upper atmosphere, that are ingested into weather prediction models that provide guidance to meteorologists that issue severe weather, aviation and marine forecasts, as well as research on global warming, air pollution, and “ground truth” for satellite data validation. The validation of space-based observations is quite important since satellite data is one of the ways numerical weather prediction models get weather information over data-sparse areas such as the vast oceans around the world. If the satellite wind data is not consistent with radiosonde observations of wind, ingesting them into the model can create significant forecast errors that impact weather guidance used by pilots. Therefore, meteorologists use radiosonde data to calibrate satellite instruments and correct for any systematic errors (biases) in the satellite data.

While the radiosonde network has a very low resolution in both time and space, losing a dozen or more RAOBs can make a huge difference in the accuracy of forecasts that pilots use every day. Most important, when weather is expected to be severe due to a dangerous outbreak of tornadic thunderstorms or a landfalling tropical system, having less data creates additional challenges for the staff at the NWS, especially now given the recent terminations. The more radiosondes that are reduced or suspended, the more noticeable the forecast skill reduction becomes.

Discontinuation of Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF) service for several airports

Effective on May 27, 2025, at 1200Z , the NWS office at Birmingham, AL will discontinue TAF service for the Anniston Regional Airport in Anniston, AL (KANB). Due to recent government staffing cuts, the NWS is also terminating TAF service at Falmouth Joint Base Cape Cod, Barnstable County, MA (KFMH) and Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport, Westfield, MA (KBAF). These are expected to take effect or before October 1, 2025. Expect to see more discontinuations of TAF service for other airports given additional terminations or retirements that are expected.

Oakland Center Weather Service Unit staffing

If you fly in and around the Bay area within the Oakland Center (ZOA) airspace, be advised that the staff at the Oakland Center Weather Service Unit (CWSU) is now down to one. This is, in part, due the Federal hiring freeze imposed on January 20th and another meteorologist that retired three weeks ago. Even before this recent retirement occurred, there were two open positions for this CWSU that were in the process of being filled.

As you may know, the CWSU issues center weather advisories (CWAs) for pilots, provides pre-shift briefings to controllers and files pilot weather reports pilots make to center controllers. Although they don’t work in the overnight hours, they do work evenings and weekends. This means the position at ZOA may be vacant during part of the day or during the entire day. The neighboring CWSUs may be able to fill in, but this depends on how much adverse weather is occurring on any given day. The AWC does issue advisories for this area in the form of SIGMETs and G-AIRMETs, but CWAs do not necessarily have to meet national SIGMET criteria to be issued. CWAs can be considered the front lines of adverse weather as it evolves over time.

EZWxBrief v2 news

EZWxBrief v2.0.3 is the current version. There have been no new releases at this point in time. We are diligently working to replace some of the weather data provided by NOAA that has discontinued recently. Much of this data provided though tax dollars is extremely expensive to outsource and we are uncertain as to how much it will cost to replace. As a result, we have paused work to get a new version of the Skew-T diagram into the app until it is clear that the data will continue to be freely available.

Check out our social media

We have permanently deleted our Facebook and Instagram business pages. You can follow EZWxBrief on YouTube (https://youtube.com@ezwxbrief) and Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/ezwxbrief.bsky.social).

Most pilots are weatherwise, but some are otherwise™

Dr. Scott Dennstaedt

Weather Systems Engineer

Founder, EZWxBrief™

CFI & former NWS meteorologist