Airmet Question

Well if the Aviation Weather Services book I have put out by the FAA would follow simple standard graphic design, bookmaking, and printing standards, I'd be able to tell ya!

No index, horrible table of contents layout, several typesetting errors....

...but please standby, currently looking further in the book.
 
Okay, since I can't find it in there I will say from memory. If I'm wrong, someone please slap me and take my private certificate away from me :sarcasm:. Airmet Sierra is for cielings at 1000 feet AGL or below and when visability is less than 3 miles...and includes the mountain obscuration part (which I can't remember the details on).

Second question... from what I remember, AIRMET tango is issued for turbulence and includes moderate turbulence, wind speeds greater than 30 kts at the surface and low-level windshear. ...so basically if the turbulence is severe or extreme, it'll be mentioned in a SIGMET.
 
Here is the quesiton where i got stuck on

According to this AIRMET excerpt, what conditions are expected?

AIRMET TURB...OK AR TX NE KS MO FROM PWE TO UIN TO STL TO RZC TO TXO TO 50W LBL TO GLD TO PWE OCNL MOD TURB BLW 080 DUE TO MOD LOW LVL SWLY WNDS OVR TRRN. CONDS CONTG BYD 20Z ENDG NR 02Z.

~here are the choses
a) Continuous moderate turbulence below 8,000 feet AGL
b) Occasional moderate turbulence below 8,000 feet MSL
c) Occasional moderate turbulence below 8,000 feet AGL

I looked thru my Jep book and was unable to locate a specific answer, to see if Airmets are MSL or AGL...then i tried to google it, and came up with both MSL and AGL, (maybe the way I worded it)

I took a stab at it and found the answer to be B. 8000 MSL...not AGL


Thanks for the insight Iruppert & Jace, i don't think I will forget this anytime soon
 
Try to think of what the information is telling you. If the information is saying that you will be flying along and encounter turbulence, why would they tell you how high above the ground you would be? Don't you fly odd's going East and even's going West? So then, if you are training for your instrument and the chart says you must cross a VOR at or a above a certain altitude, do you think that means above the ground, or what you would read on your altimeter? Typically the only time you are going to have anything telling you AGL is when you are coming into land and it is reporting a ceiling right? So when asking yourself those questions try to put yourself right there in the plane and ask what the information is teling you.

True story: I was in Montrose, CO and about to fly to Telluride. We were talking with a guy in the FBO who looked frustrated. He said he was about to fly to Telluride too but he was waiting for the weather to get better. We weren't really sure what he meant by that since you could look up to the mountains and see cloud base was quite high. He told us "Well I've been listening to the ASOS and reading the METAR and it says OVC 9000." To him that meant the MSL of the cloud base. But in fact TEX is 9078ft, field elevation! That would have put the clouds in the ground.
 
For airmets, I remember it simply by the fact that it is reported over a larger geographical area, so the ground elevation could change, making it pointless to report it agl. For metars and tafs for example, the report is made for the area directly over the corresponding airport, so the elevation is basically the same, therefore it is reported as agl.

Hope that helps too
 
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