There’s an old Buddhist saying that the fool sees only the form, while the enlightened person sees the essence. It’s strange to think that religion could give us any insight into aviation weather. But in the same way that gods tend to be elusive, many of the important details in the atmosphere are unseeable and unknowable, and can only be inferred by balloon soundings, radar samples, and satellite measurements. This makes meteorology unusual—it is both a science and an art.
When you receive a forecast, you’re mostly focused on the values that are presented. It’s a cool day in November, and you’re at an FBO in Wichita, reviewing a planning chart, and see that winds at 25,000 feet will be from 220 at 80 knots. You listen to the ATIS and hear that winds are light easterly and the ceiling is broken at 3000 feet. Using just these values you have basic measurements for your journey. But the underlying form of the atmosphere lies past these numbers. I’ll show you how to tease those values out of commonly reported aviation weather values and understand what’s really going on.
