News Training and Proficiency What A CFI Wants You To Know

Learning Weather Trends and What They Tell You

Weather—specifically the challenges it presents to the inexperienced pilot— may be one of the most misunderstood aspects of learning to fly.

Meg Godlewski

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 at 02:01 PM ET

Verified

Edited By: tccjeremy

One of the first skills a pilot should develop is the ability to acquire a weather briefing. [Credit: Meg Godlewski]

Key Takeaways:

Pilots must thoroughly learn to acquire and interpret official weather briefings, using tools like 1800WXBRIEF.com, rather than relying on informal observations.
Key skills include understanding METARs, TAFs, recognizing weather trends, decoding specific acronyms, and interpreting color-coded categorizations (LIFR, IFR, MVFR, VFR) for ceiling and visibility.
It is crucial for pilots, especially students, to understand their limitations regarding weather conditions and make safe flight decisions, as casual approaches to weather assessment can be dangerous.

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When it comes to weather, “looks pretty good” is not a PIREP (pilot report) or a weather briefing, but that’s a phrase you often hear at the airport.

I find this irksome as one of the first skills a pilot should develop is the ability to acquire a weather briefing. Although I no longer fly on a daily basis, one of the first things I do each morning is to pull up a weather briefing from Leidos Flight Service, more commonly known as 1800WXBRIEF.

Meg Godlewski

Meg Godlewski has been an aviation journalist for more than 24 years and a CFI for more than 20 years. If she is not flying or teaching aviation, she is writing about it. Meg is a founding member of the Pilot Proficiency Center at EAA AirVenture and excels at the application of simulation technology to flatten the learning curve. Follow Meg on Twitter @2Lewski.