Live aviation weather extremes
Where the weather is worst on Earth right now — ranked live from thousands of reporting stations in more than 200 countries.
Airports worldwide issue a METAR roughly every hour, in the same format whether the field is in Kansas or Kazakhstan. Most are unremarkable. This page pulls out the ones that are not: the fields sitting in fog, the lowest ceilings anywhere, the strongest winds, and — because it is the most interesting one to learn from — the most complicated reports being issued right now.
Tap any group in a report below to decode it. New to these? Start with how to read a METAR.
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How the rankings work
Every list except the last is a straight sort on the decoded value — visibility, ceiling above ground, wind speed, temperature, and the temperature–dewpoint spread, which is the best single predictor of fog forming. The flight category beside each station is derived from ceiling and visibility together.
Hardest to decode has no official definition, so it is scored rather than measured. A report earns points for how many groups it has, far more for genuinely uncommon ones — thunderstorms, freezing precipitation, wind shear, variable wind ranges, vertical visibility, funnel clouds, peak wind and lightning remarks — and a little for the length of its remarks. The score is shown so you can disagree with it.
Why the format is worth learning
METAR and TAF are ICAO standards, so the same abbreviations work anywhere in the
world. A pilot who can read one can read the weather at any airport on the planet
without translation. The differences are regional rather than structural: North
America reports visibility in statute miles and pressure in inches of mercury, while
most of the world uses metres and hectopascals, and CAVOK appears far
more often outside the US.
- How to read a METAR — field by field through an observation
- How to read a TAF — forecasts, and what FM, TEMPO and BECMG really mean
- VFR, MVFR, IFR and LIFR — the thresholds behind the colours
- PIREPs, AIRMETs, SIGMETs and TFRs — the products that cover the route, not the airport
For interest and learning, not for flight planning. Observations here may be several minutes old, and a ranking is not a briefing. Get your weather from an official source before you fly.