How to read a METAR: a weather report piece by piece
A METAR is a short weather report from an airport, issued every half hour or hour. It looks like a string of codes, but the groups always come in the same order. Let us read two examples.
Example 1: fine weather
UKBB 101000Z 05008KT 020V090 CAVOK 20/09 Q1021 NOSIG
- UKBB: the airport code (ICAO), here Kyiv Boryspil;
- 101000Z: day 10 of the month, 10:00 universal time (Z = UTC);
- 05008KT: wind from 050° at 8 knots;
- 020V090: the wind direction varies between 020° and 090°;
- CAVOK: visibility 10 km or more, no significant cloud or weather;
- 20/09: temperature 20 °C, dew point 9 °C. The closer the two, the more likely fog is;
- Q1021: QNH pressure 1021 hPa, the value you set on the altimeter;
- NOSIG: no significant change expected in the next two hours.
Example 2: a hard day
UKLL 101030Z 27012G22KT 3000 -RA BR BKN004 OVC012 08/07 Q0998 TEMPO 1200 RA
- 27012G22KT: wind 270° at 12 knots, gusting (G) to 22;
- 3000: visibility 3000 metres;
- -RA BR: light rain (minus means light, plus means heavy) and mist;
- BKN004: broken cloud with its base at 400 feet. Multiply the number by 100;
- OVC012: overcast at 1200 feet;
- TEMPO 1200 RA: at times visibility will drop to 1200 metres in rain.
Cloud amount is written as FEW, SCT (scattered), BKN (broken) or OVC (overcast). The base of the lowest BKN or OVC layer is what pilots call the ceiling: it decides whether you will see the runway on the approach.
What to do with it: paste any report into our METAR / TAF decoder and it will lay it out line by line. The challenging weather page shows where the most interesting landing weather is right now.
About Ukraine: while the airspace is closed, Ukrainian airports do not publish METARs. Their pages show weather model data instead, marked “model”.