Expected weather conditions are one of the key pieces of information
used by aviation flight operations personnel when setting airport arrival rates.
The Impacts Terminal Aerodrome Forecast Board or Impact TAF board,
Is a Tactical Decision Aid or TDA,
available from the Aviation Weather Center, or AWC, the aviation hub of the National Weather Service.
The TAF board provides FAA-defined thresholds to show how forecast weather conditions
may Impact airport operations through the next one to two days.
The previous video introduced the purpose and features of the TAF board
as well as how the data is obtained.
In this video, we'll look at how to access and use this TDA.
There are a few ways to get to the TAF board.
The easiest access is from The AWC site.
First navigate to the main ADDS TAF page via the forecast menu, or by clicking on the TAFs button.
From the TAFs page, scroll down to "Show Impact TAF Board"
To see a specific airport, you can enter an airport ID such as KIAD.
Note that all airport IDs need a K' prefix.
For now we will just click on go to TAF board to see the list of default airports.
The default set of core airports
are those that have the most impact on the National Airspace System
but any airport with the TAF can be shown.
Airports with either observed or forecast weather conditions
exceeding thresholds for a given time period
are color-coded to indicate the potential impacts.
Yellow shading indicates slight impacts to terminals and arrival rates.
Orange is moderate,
and red represents high potential impact.
Rather than focusing on categorical amendment criteria or the standard flight categories,
thresholds focus on combinations of weather elements that are particularly significant to local airport operations
such as ceilings, visibility, weather wind speed and wind direction.
These thresholds may be triggered by single weather criteria or combinations of multiple criteria.
In the default view,
TAF board columns represent conditions from current observations on the left
through forecast our 13 on the right.
Rolling over the 4-letter identifier shows the full airport name.
Clicking on an airport name from the main view
launches the detailed TAF impacts view, as well as raw TAF and METAR our data.
The top airports in the eastern, central and western regions
are grouped and are sorted north to south in each section.
To display individual airports or a series of airports
type their identifier into the field at the top left.
Enter multiple Ids separated by commas to see only those airports.
If multiple stations are selected, the board remains in its non detailed view.
If a single airport is selected It will show the detailed TAF
and METAR our view for that airport.
For detailed Information about why and how thresholds are exceeded
Roll your cursor over any color-coded cells.
Blank bells indicate that potential impacts due to weather are not observed or forecast.
The TAF board uses traditional aviation weather codes
WX can mean a variety of potential conditions,
such as freezing or frozen precipitation,
thunderstorms or rain.
If the weather is in brackets, It means that It is included in the tempo group of the TAF.
To view potential impacts further into the future,
click the arrows on the top right.
Use the arrows at the top left
to move back on the timeline.
for detailed documentation, click the info button in the upper right corner of the page.
Also check back on this page for information about future enhancements.
The impacts TAF board available on the AWC site
converts raw TAF and METAR text into an easy to interpret graphical user interface
Supporting The Weather Ready Nation initiative by making It easier to identify
where major weather impacts across the US could affect flight operations.
For more Information contact the Aviation Weather Center