aviation-weather_skill

Overview

This skill fetches aviation weather data (METAR, TAF, PIREPs, SIGMETs) from the NOAA Aviation Weather Center for any ICAO airport worldwide. It delivers concise flight-relevant information like flight category, winds, visibility, clouds, temperature, altimeter, and active advisories. Use it to get current conditions, short-term forecasts, pilot reports, and combined briefings without an API key.

How this skill works

The skill queries NOAA aviationweather.gov endpoints and parses METARs, TAFs, PIREPs, and SIGMET/AIRMET products into human-readable fields and optional raw or JSON output. It supports single or multiple ICAO station requests and can limit results by time window or count. A combined briefing aggregates METAR, TAF, and active SIGMETs for one or more airports.

When to use it

• Checking current airport conditions before flight planning or dispatch
• Retrieving terminal aerodrome forecasts for upcoming hours
• Monitoring recent pilot reports for turbulence or icing encounters
• Getting active SIGMETs/AIRMETs for hazardous weather like convection, icing, or turbulence
• Generating a full weather briefing for one or several airports

Best practices

• Always use 4-letter ICAO codes (e.g., KHSV, EGLL) rather than local identifiers
• Request raw text when you need exact transmitted METAR/TAF strings for logs or regulatory use
• Check METAR update times (updated every minute) and TAF validity periods (updated every 6 hours)
• Combine METAR and TAF in a single briefing for a quick operational snapshot
• Filter SIGMETs by hazard type if you only need turbulence, icing, or convective alerts

Example use cases

• Quick preflight: avwx metar KHSV to confirm flight category and wind for takeoff/landing
• Route planning: avwx taf KJFK to review forecast wind shifts and visibility over the next 24 hours
• Weather awareness: avwx pirep --hours 4 to see recent pilot reports of turbulence along a route
• Hazard check: avwx sigmet --hazard CONVECTIVE to list active thunderstorm SIGMETs
• Multi-airport briefing: avwx brief KHSV,KMDQ to compare conditions at alternate fields