September 2026 EZNews

Thank you for taking a few minutes to read the 65th 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.

New Weather Hotspots layer

In keeping with the prime directive of the EZWxBrief progressive web app, identifying and quantifying risk just became even easier with the new Weather Hotspots Map layer. Although EZWxBrief allows you to define 12 personal weather minimums, this layer focuses solely on the six enroute personal minimums. Therefore, you can select from Ceiling, Visibility, Icing Probability, Icing Severity, Turbulence Intensity, Convective Potential or All. If an icing or turbulence attribute is selected, an Altitude Selector is provided which allows you to identify the risk for various cruise altitudes. Selecting multiple attributes together (e.g., Ceiling Along Route and Visibility Along Route) will evaluate and render the result on the Map based on the worst-case scenario. Also the Max altitude can be selected which looks at icing and turbulence over all possible altitudes also providing the worst-case scenario. Important warning: selecting Max will take some time, so be patient.

Shown below is the Weather Hotspots for the Ceiling Along Route. Any colors shown on this layer indicate a region where's there's a forecast for a broken or overcast cloud deck or ceiling. Areas of green signify that your personal minimums are met conservatively for the time selected on the EZDeparture Advisor™ and therefore represents a low risk. Regions of red are those areas that do not meet your personal minimum and represents a high risk. And yellow means that your personal minimums are met, but not by a large margin representing a moderate risk. Unique to the Ceiling Along Route, regions where you do not see green, yellow or red imply there are only scattered or few clouds forecast or there's a forecast for clear skies. In other words, no ceiling is forecast for these areas.

The Weather Hotspots layer does not require an active route be defined, but does require that the EZDeparture Advisor™ be set to a time in the future. Just like the EZDeparture Advisor™ the evaluation of personal minimums for icing and turbulence are not available for times beyond a lead time of 18 hours.

This new Weather Hotspots layer is best used with the Flight Mode or Skew-T Flight Mode. This will allow you to see how the weather hotspots change (or not) as you progress along your proposed route of flight. For the route below from KCMH to KBOS, notice as the flight progresses over central Pennsylvania, the risk jumps to high based on the Ceilings Along Route attribute.

New Lightning strikes layer

Now on the Map, you will be able to view the most recent six hours of lightning strike data. You will find a Lightning attribute listed under the Radar layer in the layer selector menu. Although it can be viewed by itself, it is provided under the Radar layer since it is meant to serve as an overlay on the MRMS Composite Radar mosaic as shown below.

This lightning data is captured from several lightning sensor networks. This includes both cloud-to-ground (gold) and intracloud (violet) lightning strikes. The color distinction between the two types of strikes will be released in EZWxBrief v3.7 in early September. The position of cloud-to-ground strikes is accurate within 500 meters in most instances.

The lightning strike icons presented on the Map are queried to be consistent with the MRMS Composite Radar mosaic. That is, when the EZDeparture Advisor™ is set to a particular time in the recent past (within six hours of the current time), any lightning strikes that occurred within the previous five minutes of that time will be shown.

New EZAltitude Advisor

Four new aircraft settings were added to support the new Altitude Advisor. This includes Oxygen on board, Pressurized/Turboprop, Ice protection system and Service ceiling. These settings help determine the maximum altitude that will be considered when the Altitude Advisor is invoked. Setting Pressurized/Turboprop to Yes, will automatically set the Oxygen on board setting also to Yes. Currently, the Ice protection system setting is not used.

The primary goal of the Altitude Advisor as it exists today is to minimize your headwind and/or maximize your tailwind component by using the forecast winds aloft. The Altitude Advisor can be found within the Route Editor immediately below the Destination airport field as shown on the right. It consists of a button labeled "Go" positioned just to the right of the Use Fcst Winds toggle.

Once you have entered a valid route into

the required route editor fields, pressing the Go button will invoke the Altitude Advisor based on the time set by the EZDeparture Advisor™. Note that pressing this button will also set the Use Fcst Winds toggle to On (if not already). For convenience, the departure time is depicted in green immediately below the Altitude Advisor and Use Fcst Winds toggle (this date/time will be included in a future release). Note that if the EZDeparture Advisor™ is set to a time in the past, it will use the top of the most recent hour as the active departure time.

The Altitude Advisor will take two or three seconds to evaluate the proposed route and will return the result by placing the suggested altitude(s) in the altitude field(s). There will also be a pulsating green color highlighting the altitude field(s) and the Go button will briefly change to Done when the Altitude Advisor has completed. If the proposed route contains a Stopover airport, it will evaluate both legs of the flight providing each leg with the best opportunity altitude based on the winds aloft forecast.

The settings mentioned earlier play a critical role in choosing the best altitude. That is, the Altitude Advisor will never choose an altitude that is above the aircraft's service ceiling or below 2,000 feet above the highest terrain for the route. Note that if Oxygen on board is set to No, the maximum altitude that will be considered (regardless of the Service ceiling setting) will be 14,000 feet. Pressing Open in Map or Open in Profile will create a new active route at the suggested altitudes. Of course, this altitude may not be optimal for other reasons (e.g., airspace).

New TAF service for Beaufort, North Carolina (KMRH)

Effective October 1, 2026 at 1200Z, the NWS office in Newport, North Carolina will begin TAF service for the Michael J. Smith Airport (KMRH), near Beaufort North Carolina.

EZWxBrief v3 News

EZWxBrief v3.5.0 and 3.6.0 were released in August. 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.

Note that starting on December 1, 2026 the monthly subscription price for EZWxBrief will increase by $0.25 to offset the increasing cost of computing resources including, but not limited to, lightning data and the cost of artificial intelligence (AI) now used throughout the app.

Support note: There will be limited email EZWxBrief support for a period of time during the first week in September. Please understand that during this period, there may be a delay of 24 hours or more before responding to your email. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Most pilots are weatherwise, but some are otherwise™

Your EZWxBrief product and sales team