June 2026 EZNews

Thank you for taking a few minutes to read the 62nd edition of EZNews!

We appreciate those members who have opted for automatic monthly renewal of their EZWxBrief membership. At this time there are no options to renew your membership annually. If you haven't yet set up your account to renew automatically, please sign in and follow the prompts if your membership has expired. Otherwise, go to the User Profile page (see right) and tap or click on the Renew button on that page. This allows you to set up your monthly renewal using a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover credit card (we do not accept American Express at this time), ensuring you continue to enjoy the simplicity of EZWxBrief.

Run EZWxBrief as a PWA

EZWxBrief is optimized to run as a progressive web app (PWA). So if you have not installed it on your device (you can install it on as many devices as you'd like), now's the time to do this to avoid weird rendering and other usability issues. See this post for more information on PWAs. You'll be happy you took the time to set this up.

EZWxBrief v3.0 is here and is now powered by EZAI

That's right, EZWxBrief now has an artificial intelligence (AI) briefing component baked into the app. It's called EZAI. This effort has required a significant financial investment and many months to develop (including a lot of testing and verification) . Consequently, this is a beta version that is still being refined and trained to provide a more representative overview of the weather for a particular route of flight. There's no doubt that even the very best AI models can and do make mistakes so use this beta version at your own risk. Be sure to evaluate all of the relevant weather guidance before making any decision to depart.

EZAI is powered by multiple AI models that synthesize the data along the route that includes the pertinent area forecast discussions (AFDs), TAFs, METARs, PIREPs, G-AIRMETs, SIGMETs, CWAs, NDFD Weather, SPC outlooks/watches and all of the EZForecast guidance (e.g., icing, turbulence, winds, etc.) to provide a summary of the risks and threats that are tied directly to your personal weather minimums. It's designed to try to walk you through your route briefing and bring all of the relevant guidance together in a short discussion.

To initiate an EZAI Weather Briefing, four conditions must exist:

1) An active route must be present.

2) Must initiate the AI briefing from the Map or Route Profile view.

3) The EZDeparture Advisor™ must be set to a time in the future.

4) Most or all of the route is located in or through the conterminous U.S.

From the Map or Route Profile view, you will see a new AI Brief button. Clicking that button will initiate the briefing based on the time set on the EZDeparture Advisor™. Please be patient, the EZAI Weather Briefing can take 8 to 12 seconds to complete given the amount of data it has to consider for the active route. Moreover, there may be times where the AI Weather Briefing may be unavailable due to rate limits that can occur from time to time. This is most likely to happen during peak hours of the day. This is done to make this feature affordable given the costs involved.

Once the briefing is initiated, you will see several sections as shown below. This includes the Synoptic Overview, Active Advisories, Departure Airport, Stopover Airport (if defined), En Route, Destination Airport and Risk Assessment. As the departure time is advanced, the less guidance is available to evaluate the risk. For example, icing and turbulence forecasts are only available out to 18 hours, so a detailed icing and turbulence analysis will not be part of the AI Weather Briefing risk assessment.

Last, but not least, if you happen to see any questionable guidance from the AI Weather Briefing, please contact us and let us know what occurred. It can make some bizarre statements like, "the front is located near the Virginia/Georgia border" given that Virginia and Georgia do not share a border. Let us know specifically what the AI Weather Briefing suggested (copy and paste the briefing text) that was out of the ordinary or incorrect? While we can't completely replicate the issue given all of the variables involved, understanding the shortfalls is still important to better train the AI models to give a more accurate briefing.

Need a fuel stop? Then add a stopover airport to your route!

The Route Editor now includes the capability to add a single stopover airport in the event you need to land and refuel before heading to your final destination. This allows you to create a second leg to your route and define how long you will be delayed at your stopover airport. The maximum amount of ground time allowed is three hours.

When opening the route editor you will notice a button to Add Stopover immediately below the Route of Flight field as shown above. Clicking on this button will allow you to choose an airport that begins the second leg of the flight. Once entered it will add the stopover airport (with a brown background color) at the end of the Route of Flight field as shown on the right. This means that the Route of Flight field includes both legs of the flight. Therefore, if there are other waypoints to your final destination, you can enter them following the stopover airport.

Next, you can choose the amount of time you will be on the ground in five minute increments with a maximum time of three hours (the default time is 30 minutes). Lastly, you can select the altitude for the second leg of the flight.

Once defined, the EZDeparture Advisor™ will take into account the descent into your stopover airport, time spent on the ground and the climb to your next cruise altitude. Moreover, the Route Profile view will also show this two-leg profile with the wind, clouds, icing and turbulence guidance shown that also takes this into account. Lastly, on the route profile view, you'll notice the arrival time (shown in brown) at your stopover airport will swap between the arrival time for the first leg and the departure time for the second leg. Of course, all of the segment arrival times after the stopover airport will be based on the departure time of the second leg.

7-Day forecasts

This feature was available in EZWxBrief v1.0, but was removed when v2 was released as discussed in the EZWxBrief v2.0 release notes. Nevertheless, the 7-Day Forecast is available only when viewing the Map. This can be selected from the main site menu as shown below or from the hamburger menu on portable devices.

This forecast is provided by the National Weather Service (NWS) and delivers the official NWS forecast for a specific location in the United States. Forecasts are generated by local NWS Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) and include both short- and extended-range outlooks, typically covering the next seven days. Data may include daytime and nighttime forecast periods, temperatures, wind speed and direction, precipitation chances, humidity, sky conditions, weather hazards, and concise text-based forecast discussions written by NWS meteorologists.

Keep in mind that you can enter an airport identifier or any city or town in the U.S. (it's not available for locations outside of the U.S.). You will be able to view the latest observation (top line) along with a 7-Day forecast. Clicking on any day will open up the official textual forecast.

Composite layer for icing and turbulence

EZWxBrief v2.9.0 added a layer for Airframe Icing and one for Turbulence. When you add the Airframe Icing or Turbulence layer to the Map, you'll see an altitude slider on the right side of the Map as shown on the right. This slider has a vertical resolution of 1,000 feet extending to FL300 for Airframe Icing and FL450 for Turbulence. Now, there's a new MAX altitude layer for both Airframe Icing and Turbulence. Similar to the ground-based radar composite reflectivity, this is a composite showing the maximum value in the column from 1,000 feet MSL to FL300 for icing or FL450 for turbulence. To see that layer, simply drag the altitude slider to the next step beyond the highest altitude and it will render this composite on the Map. Keep in mind that this may take a second or two to render.

Digital ATIS

Digital Automatic Terminal Information Service or D-ATIS is now available for some airports as part of the Airport Wx page site menu. D-ATIS a text-based version of the Automatic Terminal Information Service (ATIS) used at many airports to provide pilots with current operational and weather information. Like a traditional voice ATIS broadcast, D-ATIS contains essential preflight and arrival information such as the active runways, instrument approaches in use, NOTAMs, airport surface conditions, significant weather, wind, visibility, ceiling, altimeter setting, and other operational advisories. For some airports such as Charlotte/Douglas Intl Airport (KCLT) there will be both an arrival and departure D-ATIS. D-ATIS is only available at a subset of typically larger Class B or Class C primary airports.

New visible and infrared satellite layers

A new GOES-East/GOES-West GeoColor and Infrared satellite images can now be added as a layer on the Map for six hours prior to the current time (should match the MRMS Composite Reflectivity layer). Both satellite layers are available during the daytime and nighttime. Each time step is 10 minutes. Keep in mind, the latency is approximately 30-40 minutes from the current time. As shown on the right, the infrared satellite image is color-enhanced to show the highest (coldest) cloud tops.

5-minute METARs

In addition to the routine surface observations, 5-minute METARs for the previous 12 hours are also available for some airports that can also report special observations. The Meteorological Assigned Data Ingest System (MADIS) 5-minute METAR concept refers to the high-frequency sub-hourly weather observations made available through the MADIS. While standard ASOS stations typically transmit a routine observation once per hour (or as a “SPECI” when conditions change based on specific criteria), the underlying sensors actually collect weather data much more frequently. MADIS taps into these automated systems to provide updates every five minutes offering a near real-time granular look at evolving weather patterns that a standard hourly report might miss.

These reports are particularly valuable for identifying the exact timing of rapid changes, such as the passage of a dry line, the sudden onset of low-level wind shear, or the precise moment a ceiling drops below VFR minimums. Because they are disseminated outside the traditional OPMET (Operational Meteorological) channels, they are often used by meteorologists and high-end flight planning tools to “fill the gaps” between hourly updates. This allows for a much more responsive analysis of the current atmosphere, effectively turning a static observation into a continuous data stream.

To see the 5-minute METARs for any station, simply slide the 5-minute switch to the right as shown above. You'll notice it will show all of the routine and special observations in addition to a METAR every five minutes. This is primarily for stations that have an ASOS. Stations with an AWOS do not report every 5 minutes, so the switch will not show any additional observations for AWOS sites.

More static imagery decommissioned

Very soon, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) will discontinue the North American Mesoscale (NAM) Forecast System, the Short-Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF), the High-Resolution Ensemble Forecast (HREF), and the High Resolution Window (HiresW) models. These legacy systems will be replaced by the new Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) later this summer. Consequently, the NAM, HRW and SREF forecasts have been removed from the static imagery and we are working on getting replacement imagery for the HREF from the new RRFS model once it becomes available. Also, the Lowest Freezing Level static imagery has been removed given that it is now available on the Map (under Airframe Icing).

Did you know?

While not a weather topic, certainly interesting for aviators...but, did you know that in order for GPS to be accurate, it must account for special and general relativity?

The Relativistic Time Drift

That's right! Satellites within the GPS constellation are equipped with atomic clocks that are intentionally designed to operate slightly slower while on Earth. This proactive adjustment is essential because of the principles of relativity, which state that clocks in orbit operate at a faster rate than those on the surface. Once a satellite reaches space, it is influenced by two contrasting relativistic effects: special relativity results in the high-speed clock losing about 7 microseconds per day, while general relativity leads to a gain of approximately 45 microseconds per day due to the reduced gravitational influence. Ultimately, the gravitational effect prevails, resulting in unadjusted satellite clocks gaining an average of about 38 microseconds daily.

Why Milliseconds Matter

While 38 microseconds may seem insignificant to many, it can be disastrous for systems that depend on the speed of light for accurate positioning...like GPS. Since light travels ~983.57 feet in just one microsecond, a timing error of this size could lead to a failure in GPS navigation accuracy within a few hours. If left uncorrected, positioning errors would accumulate at a rate of about 6.2 miles per day, making the system noticeably inaccurate in as little as two minutes. To address this issue, engineers implement a precise frequency adjustment on the ground—configuring the clocks to operate at 10.22999999543 MHz instead of the standard 10.23 MHz—ensuring they function at the correct rate once they reach orbit.

Engineering Einstein's Theories

This adjustment of frequency prior to launch addresses the significant and consistent aspect of time drift, while minor fluctuations due to non-circular orbits are computed and corrected by each GPS receiver individually. In essence, the effectiveness of GPS acts as an ongoing, practical illustration of Albert Einstein's theories of special and general relativity. Instead of viewing relativity as a purely theoretical idea, the system's developers approached it as a critical engineering parameter. Each accurate location determination produced by a contemporary smartphone is directly dependent on the precise quantitative accuracy of these relativistic computations. Want more details? Click here to read a more technical explanation. Enjoy!

EZWxBrief v2 News

EZWxBrief v2.9.1, v2.9.2, v2.10.0, and v3.0.0 were released in May. The release notes can be found here. If the app is open, sign out and close the app. Upon restart, you will have immediate access to the latest release.

Most pilots are weatherwise, but some are otherwise™

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