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What Exactly Does XM Weather Show Us?

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • WxWorx employs extensive redundancy in its data collection and transmission infrastructure, delivering weather products to aircraft cockpits rapidly, typically within 30 seconds of processing.
  • The system uses proprietary algorithms to process Nexrad radar data, creating composite images every five minutes by combining recent and slightly older scans, and features automated software to eliminate false radar echoes.
  • These weather products are intended solely for situational awareness, not as tactical tools, and pilots are advised to continue adhering to established safety margins around severe weather.
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WxWorx on Wings, the weather products that XM Satellite Weather downlinks from satellites to our cockpits, is provided to XM by Baron Services’ WxWorx. The weather products are collected at two distinct collection points, one located at WxWorx’s headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama, and the other inside the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina. The two collection points are part of the redundancy that WxWorx has carefully built into its system.

Continuing the effort at redundancy, the weather data is delivered by both satellite and high speed internet to the collection centers. “In most cases,” explained Bob Baron, founder, CEO and president of Baron Services, “we have double redundancy.” As soon as WxWorx receives the information the data stream is automatically sent to XM over a dedicated line and two internet connections. Again, the object is to have no single point of failure. The transmission goes to XM Satellite Weather’s operation center and is inserted into its uplink to both of its satellites and broadcast over all its relay stations on the surface of the earth.

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