Aviation Weather Tools Available on the Houston Center Weather Service Unit Web Site

Access to the World Wide Web is growing and will continue to do so as cellular telephones, handheld and laptop computers, and similar devices continue to become integrated into our society. More and more people obtain their weather information via the Internet. Pilots can now use the Web to gather weather information from even the most remote locations before taking to the sky. Many pilots may not be aware of the aviation-based weather tools that are available on National Weather Service Web sites. The Houston Center Weather Service Unit provides Web-based recorded video briefings three times a day in which the forecast weather conditions across the airspace are discussed. A vertical wind profile product on the Web site provides pilots with access to numerical weather model-based vertical wind forecasts from the surface to 20,000 feet for several airports. A color-coded Tactical Decision Aid version of the Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF) for any valid National Weather Service TAF can be easily displayed by entering the airport identifier. Runway crosswind information is available in the Decision Aid or users can enter their own data into a crosswind calculator. Development of the Houston Center Weather Service Unit Web site is ongoing in an effort to provide useful tools to the aviation community.