August 26, 2010

FAA non-Federal Commissioned AWOS sites

It took a FOIA request to get the list (which should be published on the FAA.gov website, but isn't).

Here are the non-Federal (private and/or local government airports) Commissioned AWOS sites sorted by state and city (PDF) -- Commissioned AWOS sites  .

Note: this pdf was prepared by scanning and OCR'ing the paper copy received from the FAA in April, 2010.  There may be additional sites that were added since April, 2010.

March 14, 2010

Weather University

The National Weather Service's JetStream website should really be titled "Weather University", but they modestly call it "JetStream - Online School for Weather"

Spend a few minutes, or spend many hours ... virtually every weather topic is covered in easy-to-read capsules.

NWS JetStream - Topic Matrix

Where do pilot's weather info come from?

Interested in who does what (in NWS, NOAA, and weather.gov) for aviation weather?

A slide presentation by National Weather Service - Missoula MT  shows which part of which agency does some of the things important to aviators.

Tons of useful website URL's are presented (although they used Flash for the slide show which makes it hard to jump to a reference and back again.)

FAA Cult of Secrecy

Doing research on Non-Federal AWOS for a possible blog entry here on Aviation Weather News ...

But it isn't easy!!

The FAA is throwing up all kinds of roadblocks, including requiring a Freedom of Information Act request just to get a list of Non-Federal AWOS's. A FOIA request just for the list!

I guess the FAA hasn't read Obama's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, issued on January 21, 2009. Maybe they will get around to reading it soon (it's only been 13 months now).

More later. Stayed tuned.