When the FAA changed its weather reporting format to match the international metar standard several years ago many of us with more than a few years in the logbook scoffed. For one thing, what was a “metar” anyway? We had grown up, and grown old, with the sequence report that used to clatter out of old low-speed teletype machines at flight service stations spread across the country. The word “sequence” made sense because it was a sequential observation of the weather conditions over the airport on the hour, or when rapid changes made a special report useful.
Metar is an acronym of some international terminology having to do with meteorology, I think. I don’t really remember. It contained new abbreviations for weather phenomenon such as the letters BR for mist. What’s up with BR? Derived from French, I think. And low ceiling heights were replaced with a report of “vertical visibility” in hundreds of feet. We always thought of visibility as a quantity you measured looking straight ahead, not up. If you’re looking up instead of ahead when landing, it’s not going to work out very well.
