You’ve seen and almost certainly used a WSI Pilotbrief weather station in your travels. It’s almost a required ritual of flight: Stop by the screen and make a last check of the radar or TFRs while you finish your lukewarm coffee.
A Look Inside WSI Weather
Youve seen and almost certainly used a WSI Pilotbrief weather station in your travels. Its almost a required ritual of flight: Stop by the screen and make a last check of the radar or TFRs while you finish your lukewarm coffee. As a pilot, do you care whos behind the weather information you see at the FBO or in the cockpit? The answer is largely, No. But there are some differences between what you get from a briefer, on the web or from the competing XM weather provided by Baron Services. What we found more interesting was what a weather service must do in collecting, distilling and delivering the weather in a format on which pilots can depend.
Key Takeaways:
- WSI is a major weather service provider, part of The Weather Channel, with 40% of its business dedicated to aviation, supplying data to FBOs (Pilotbrief stations), major airlines, and serving as the future ADS-B datalink weather provider.
- The company offers advanced, proprietary aviation weather services, including custom TAFs for airlines and their unique NOWrad NEXRAD product which uses a specific low-angle radar scan for detailed ground-level precipitation data.
- WSI utilizes sophisticated internal weather models (like custom RUC and WRF) to generate highly detailed and specialized forecasts, with the capability to produce a "forecast NEXRAD" predicting thunderstorm activity days in advance, a potentially revolutionary tool not yet available to general aviation pilots.
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