Those of you who use foreflight, weather forecasting question
Posted by WhenWillIBeAPilot@reddit | flying | View on Reddit | 14 comments
Suppose you are planning a trip; how frequently do you check the weather leading up to it and how accurate are their predictions? Particularly their “daily” feature?
Perfect_Insurance_26@reddit
Where I'm at, the daily can be the most accurate forecast, especially the closer it gets to the time of departure. There aren't Tiny Area Forecasts at the places I fly out of, and the MOS kinda sucks.
I honestly don't look at weather until the night before, and then a few times within the last few hours, and then a bunch of times in the last hour, and then once right before pulling the plane out.
Mithster18@reddit
My general rule is 3 days out forecasts can be usually predictable, any further it's a coin flip.
Use as many sources as possible to formulate a picture and remember absolutes are never gaurenteed
Thomas-Ligotti97@reddit
If you genuinely have to question what forecast to use I 100% reccomend LEIDOS. I think the call centers are officially disbanded (someone correct me if I’m wrong) but the website forecasting itself works pretty nice imo
Ok-Money2811@reddit
Take the daily with a grain of salt…it’s close enough but of course it’s accuracy also based on how many days we’re talking. If it’s a week out, be skeptical. If it’s a day or two, yeah you can probably plan on that.
I find it’s easier to do preliminary planning as you are talking about to just open the Apple weather app. It’s basically the same idea.
WhenWillIBeAPilot@reddit (OP)
The flight I’m planning is tomorrow
acfoltzer@reddit
I would treat it like the extended forecast from a weather app or your local news. Better than nothing when you're too far out for more precise forecast products, but in the US we have a range of better options when closer in. Prog charts for the wider-scale view, TAFs when flying near airports that have them, MOS when not, and definitely don't skip the Area Forecast Discussion.
BigOwen9@reddit
Trying looking at the forecast discussion
FBoondoggle@reddit
Bug smasher guy here. For longer trips I use Windy up to the day of. It's great and the annual subscription is not too bad. Came out of the sailing world I think, but they've made it useful for aviation as well. (Also ski trip planning.)
Quirky-Advisor9323@reddit
I use the daily feature constantly but in conjunction with all other data sources. The daily data is drawn from NWS data anyway. It’s more useful for longer forecasts, like 1-5 days out. I also read the full narrative discussion under thr TAF forecast tab. Day of, I might check the daily tab but am now also looking at METARs and TAFs for the full route, as well as examining prog charts and the other imagery that Foreflight makes available in its briefing feature. If conditions are borderline for me I’m then digging in to skew T charts to help me make final decisions.
taycoug@reddit
1-3 days out, prog charts in FF
< 1 day out, TAFs + forecast discussion
Depending on how neurotic I’m feeling, I’m checking the weather anywhere from once a day to every 3-5 minutes. The latter tends to be less productive.
threeleafcloverspy@reddit
I use it a lot. I have to schedule most of my flights 2+ weeks ahead of time. So before there’s anything in the forecast.
I then end up scheduling a bunch of other things around that so the daily forecast usually gives me an idea of how likely my flight will actually happen.
Like right now all of next week has terrible weather predicted and it’s been that way the whole time. So I’m scheduling some things assuming at least one of my flights gets cancelled.
It’s kind of like a rough probability of the likelihood I get to fly or not.
flyingron@reddit
More than a day out, it's always a crap shoot. I look at the longer prog charts with optimism but know weather happens.
AIMIF@reddit
I don’t use the daily tab much. Maybe as general overview for the day of or for overnight temps if I’m trying to avoid having frost on the airplane the next morning, but I find it to be lacking as a days out planning tool. So I use the other forecast info for planning in advance
rFlyingTower@reddit
This is a copy of the original post body for posterity:
Suppose you are planning a trip; how frequently do you check the weather leading up to it and how accurate are their predictions? Particularly their “daily” feature?
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