Posts Tagged ‘weather’

where have KPWK’s METARs gone?

Monday, September 15th, 2008

I’m a weather hawk. I constantly watch it in my area. Lately I’ve been focusing on the airport METARs as a way to both learn to read them and try and get a feel for what the differences may be across the airports in the areas during similar weather conditions.

But something funky is going on with KWPK’s station.

For the last couple days, even before our recent heavy-storm weekend, it seems like there aren’t any METARs being reported for KPWK. I use a weather widget on my Mac that pulls the METARs from NOAA’s aviation weather service, but it’s been giving me blank readings for KPWK. Even a direct link to NOAA’s METAR page for KPWK returns an error.

http://adds.aviationweather.gov/metars/index.php?submit=1&station_ids=KPWK

I wonder if something happened to the reporting station…

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in the favor of mother nature

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Mother nature likes me. Here’s Midway’s METAR just a few hours before I head over:

KMDW: 651Z 35005KT 10SM FEW041 SCT060 28/18 A3010

Winds out of the North at 5kts, visibility 10 miles, a few clouds at 4,100 and scattered at 6,000. Just South of us in Lansing, IL the sky is clear and the winds are reporting calm.

KIGQ: 645Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 27/19 A3010

Here’s hoping it stays the same.

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there are airports everywhere

Monday, July 7th, 2008

I didn’t know there were so many airports nearby. I’ve been reading a lot on the AOPA website, where a casual search for airports within 100 statute miles of Midway turned up 179 airports. 179!

Many are heliports, and a few are not open to GA, but that’s an impressive number. I never realized that there were so many in the area. When I think of Chicago airports I usually only think of Palwaukee (now called Chicago Executive), O’Hare, and Midway. That’s my own ignorance showing because I rarely see any others, having been born and raised here in Chicago.

With this new info, I’ve been piping the “local” airport names into My Metar and giving myself a picture of the area weather. I’ve always been sort of a weather bug, but my inputs have always been the stations in the city, never outside. Now I’m finding I’ll need to keep a keen eye on the area as a whole, and somehow that’s more exciting.

The brief list of which airports I’m watching…

KMDW - Midway
KORD - O’Hare
KIGQ - Lansing Municipal
KGYY - Gary, Indiana
KLOT - Lewis University
KPWK - Chicago Executive (Palwaukee)
KDPA - DuPage
KJOT - Joliet
KARR - Aurora

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