Private Pilot METAR RMK section

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shdw

Well-Known Member
Just looking for some input here. What do you guys teach your private pilots and/or expect them to know with regards to the remarks section of the METAR report.
 
[FONT=Monospace,Courier]RMK AO2 SLP269 T00111028

That's pretty much it. Because that's the standard stuff they'll see.
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Knowing it along with a $1.63 will get them a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I show them what the stuff is- how SLP corellates to the isobars on the WX maps. Show them temperature and dewpoint in 10s... but tell them they'll probably never need to use it.
 
SLP, exact temperature, peak wind or wind shift, and to recognize the stuff about TCUs, CBs, or LTG in the area.

I wouldn't care about the exact temperature, but I got asked about it on my private oral, so I figure it's better to teach it just to be sure.
 
shdw said:
What do you guys teach your private pilots and/or expect them to know with regards to the remarks section of the METAR report.
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Everything but the pressure tendency, and I expect them to at least recognize that. I developed a handout that includes dozens of samples, so they don't have much excuse for not memorizing them.
 
tgrayson said:
Everything but the pressure tendency, and I expect them to at least recognize that. I developed a handout that includes dozens of samples, so they don't have much excuse for not memorizing them.
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Which ones do you feel are most pertinent to a private pilot to always know? Basically, which parts are useful for an everyday visual flight scenario in your opinion.
 
Each remark has an appropriate impact to aviation operations. As a meteorologist, I made sure my students understood when it was appropriate to pay attention and when to not really care. More importantly, I wanted them to see value in the aviation weather products available to them instead of ignoring them.
 
shdw said:
Which ones do you feel are most pertinent to a private pilot to always know? Basically, which parts are useful for an everyday visual flight scenario in your opinion.
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The basic idea is that you don't know if you need to know it unless you know what it is. For most of them, once you know what it is, interpretation is straight-forward. Some of the data is there for meteorologists, rather than pilots. For instance, the "T" group contains the temperature and dewpoint to 1/10 of a degree. The reason it exists is that when METARS went from Fahrenheit to Celsius, some of the temperature measurement resolution was lost, since a Celsius degree is bigger than a Fahrenheit degree. The "T" group was added to provide the meteorologist with the same temperature resolution he originally had.
 
surreal1221 said:
Each remark has an appropriate impact to aviation operations. As a meteorologist, I made sure my students understood when it was appropriate to pay attention and when to not really care. More importantly, I wanted them to see value in the aviation weather products available to them instead of ignoring them.
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Shed some light? I don't know about others here, but I would love to learn more about which remarks have more or less impact based on the weather encountered. I don't have my II and thus I rarely really pay attention to the RMK section. Back in my instrument training it was invaluable, but I felt it was fairly useless to my visual flying.
 
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