The EZWxBrief progressive app allows you to not only show forecasts for airports across the conterminous U.S. and southern Canada, but also provides the latest surface observations for most airports that issue a routine (METAR) or special observation (SPECI).
First, here's how you display station markers on the EZMap. Click or tap on the Start button from anywhere in the application and select Plan a route from the Quick Start menu. This will open up the EZMap where you can now add one or more layers to the map. Surface observations are part of the Station Marker layer. To add a Station Marker layer, click or tap on the Layer Selector icon in the upper-left as shown by the red arrow in the image below. Next, choose one of the Station Marker layers available from the menu. In the example below, the Flight Category marker has been selected with the attribute All to display the station markers for all of the flight category types (e.g., VFR, MVFR, etc.). If you only want to display markers that have a low IFR (LIFR) flight category, deselect the VFR, MVFR and IFR attributes to have those filtered from the map.
If you do not have an active route defined, then you will see a generic time slider at the bottom of the display as shown in the image below. The time slider will default to the time set from your previous visit to EZWxBrief unless that time is in the past. In that case, the slider will be set to the top of the next whole hour and positioned at left-most point on the slider. For example, if the current time is 1422Z, the time slider will be set to 15Z as shown below.
In order to see the latest surface observation markers, the slider needs to be set to that left-most position as shown above. Click are tap on any of the markers shown on the EZMap to see a tabular display of the latest observation including the coded METAR text at the bottom. Shown above is the surface observation for Asheville, North Carolina (KAVL) valid at 1354Z. The header of the tabular display indicates that this is a surface observation and not a forecast.
If there is an active route, the EZDeparture Advisor will replace the generic time slider as shown below. All else remains the same.
If you click or press and drag the time shown at the top of the EZDeparture Advisor, the markers will render the EZForecast for each station shown on the EZMap layer that is selected. In the example below, the EZDeparture Advisor was moved to the right to 19Z on Monday. If you click or tap on a Flight Category marker, it will render a tabular display of the EZForecast like the one shown below for Asheville valid at 19Z. Notice that the header of the tabular display now says EZForecast. Note that there are more airports with a forecast than with a surface observation.
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Most pilots are weatherwise, but some are otherwise™
Dr. Scott Dennstaedt
Weather Systems Engineer
Founder, EZWxBrief™
CFI & former NWS meteorologist
