$Id: README,v 1.2 2005/06/23 07:07:18 kees-guest Exp $

METAR reports are meteorogical weather reports for aviation. Metar is a small
program which downloads weather reports for user-specified stations and
optionally decodes them into a human-readable format.

Currently, metar supports decoding date/time, wind, visibility, cloud layers,
temperature, air pressure and weather phenomena, such as rain, fog, etc. Also,
more work in the area of clouds need to be done, as support for Cumulus or
Cumulunimbus is not yet decoded.

There is a distinct difference between European METAR reports and US Metar
reports. A US METAR report typically looks like:

KJFK 141751Z 33017G22KT 10SM FEW050 02/M10 A3005 RMK AO2 SLP174 T00221100
10033 20017 51007

This METAR can be decoded as follows:

KJFK	    John F. Kennedy Airport, New York, New York, This is the ICAO
            identifier of the airport.

141751Z     The report is of the 14th of the month, at 17:51Z (which is 12:51pm
            local time in New York in the winter.)

33017G22KT  The wind is coming from the direction of 330 degrees (Northwest)
            at 17 knots, with wind gusts to 22 knots.

10SM        Visibility at the ground is clear (10 statue miles or more)

FEW050      FEW clouds at 5000 feet. Few is METAR-speak for 2/8 cloud cover.

02/M10      The temperature is 2 degrees Celcius, with the dewpoint at -10C.

A3005       The altimeter setting (air pressure) is 30.05 inches Hg

RMK etc     Remarks local to the field.



A European METAR report:

EHAM 141825Z 18010KT 2700 BR SCT003 BKN004 04/04 Q1024 BECMG BKN003

EHAM	 	Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, The Netherlands.

141825Z	    The report is of the 14th of the month, at 18:25Z (which is 19:25
            local time in Amsterdam in the winter.

18010KT	    The wind is coming from 180 degrees (due South) at 10 knots.

2700        Visibility at ground level is 2700 meters.

BR          Mist (visibility at least 5/8 statue mile)

SCT003      Scattered clouds at 300 ft (SCT is 4/8 cover)

BKN004      Broken clouds at 400 ft (BKN is 5/8 through 7/8 cover)

04/04	    Temperature 4 degrees C, dewpoint 4 C

Q1024	    Air pressure at 1024 hPa

BECMG BKN003 Becoming BK003, cloud layer is changing to BKN at 300 ft.


The program currently supports the following command line paramters:

-d 	Decode METARs
-h  Show a short usage summary
-v  Be verbose


Currently recognized weather phenomena are:

	Descriptors
		MI	Shallow
		BL	Blowing
		BC	Patches
		SH	Showers
		PR	Partial
		DR	Drifting
		TS	Thunderstorm
		FZ	Freezing
		VC Vicinity

	Weather phenomena
		DZ	Drizzle
		IC	Ice Crystals
		UP	Unkniwn
		RA	Rain
		PL	Ice Pellets
		SN	Snow
		GR	Hail
		SG	Snow Grains
		GS	Small hail/snow pellets
	
	Obscuration
		BR	Mist (or vis <= 5/8 sm)
		SA	Sand
		FU	Smoke
		HZ	Haze
		VA	Volcanic Ash
		PY	Spray
		DU	Widespread Dust

	Other
		SQ	Squall
		FC	Funnel Cloud
		SS	Sand storm
		+FC	Tornado/Watersprout
		DS	Dust storm
		PO	Well developed dust/sand swirls

Metar sources and bug tracking are gracefully hosted by the Debian project.
Please visit http://alioth.debian.org/projects/metar/ for more information.

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