Aviation Weather Center Website Upgrade

While the site was due for an update, some of the changes haven’t necessarily been a step forward.

Scott Dennstaedt, Ph.D

Friday, December 08, 2023 at 06:38 PM ET

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The new Aviation Weather Center site launched on October 16. [Courtesy: NOAA]

Key Takeaways:

The aviationweather.gov website has been significantly updated, adopting a Progressive Web App (PWA) design for improved mobile responsiveness and centralizing most data on the Graphical Forecasts for Aviation (GFA) webpage, which now includes an integrated cross-section tool and the GFA-LA (formerly HEMS) tool.
A major change is the termination of dozens of static weather images, with plans to eventually eliminate all static imagery, impacting flight planning websites and EFB apps that previously scraped this data.
Despite improving mobile access, the new platform has some noted deficiencies, such as lower vertical resolution for certain interactive forecasts, a lack of clear indicators when data layers are void, and inconsistent international data availability across the U.S. borders in the GFA tool.

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If you frequently use aviationweather.gov for your preflight planning, by now you’ve noticed a new look and feel to the Aviation Weather Center website. That’s because on October 16, the website received a long overdue facelift. There were a lot of changes—some of them for the better, but also some for the worse. Here’s a brief summary of a few of the more significant alterations.

READ MORE: NOAA Changing Weather Site

Overview

A majority of the weather data will appear on the graphical forecasts for aviation (GFA) webpage. This is the heart and soul of the new site. Here’s a brief description of the purpose of this page as posted in the GFA help on aviationweather.gov.