You may have noticed a new look to the aviation website, as of August 2010 and more recently updated in December 2010. The purpose of the new site is to include all the functionality of the old aviation website as well as improve upon it. We used feedback from pilots at a recent Pacific Northwest aviation conference to provide you with an easier-to-use and more thorough platform for access to local and regional weather data. Specifically, the purpose of the website is as follows:

• Organize aviation weather data from multiple sources so local pilots can be situationally aware of the current and near-term weather situation in Southwest Oregon and Northern California
• Highlight the Medford Weather Forecast Office's (WFO) aviation weather discussion that details our forecast area's expected aviation weather impacts
• Provide training resources for pilots to increase local weather knowledge
• Use flexible platform that allows for quick changes and updates based upon new data and customer feedback
  

The following text and images will hopefully guide users through parts of our new page so they can access the same data as the previous page. Additionally, I encourage users to explore the page to become more familiar with it.

• What is on the aviation homepage?




The circle on the bottom-left is the link from the main Medford WFO homepage that takes you to the aviation homepage. From there, you will be transported to the site that you see above. Here, a discussion that details aviation weather impacts across our forecast area (from current out to about 24 hours) will be updated four times each day. You can click on the "Full Area Forecast Discussion" link if you'd like to see the entire public discussion for our forecast area. We encourage feedback on these discussions because this is our most detailed product to provide pilots with an understanding of how the current weather situation will impact aviation interests.

Below the discussion is the TAF and METAR map that will display observations from across the area. When you mouseover a METAR station, the station name and elevation, current conditions, raw TAF (if the site you clicked on has a TAF associated with it), and sunrise/sunset in local time will display. If you would like the decoded TAF, simply click on one of the METARs and some tabs at the top of the page will provide options to display a history of observations (default), decoded TAF, NWS forecast for that point, and LAMP model forecast guidance.



• Where are the "RAWS" and "Other Sensors"?
  • These options were removed to make room for the discussion...to allow for more information on a single page.
  • If I find that many pilots in the region used the RAWS or othere sensor data, I can certainly add them back in there, or make an additional map to display all that data. Please contact the webmaster if you wish to see these observations added.
  • Other sensors include all types of weather observations in the area, to include Department of Transportation, agricultural, and other observations.
    
    
    
• Where can I find soaring forecasts?
  • You can find the latest soaring forecast for Medford and Salem when you click on the "Winds" tab at the top of the page.



• Where can I find PIREP information?



If you choose the "PIREPs" tab at the top of the page, the past 6 hours of PIREPs for the region will be displayed. Raw text of the PIREPs is displayed at the bottom if you scroll down.

Other important aviation weather data, like AIRMETs and SIGMETs are hopefully easy to find using the tabs at the top of the page. Additionally, there are other features on the aviation website that you can explore on your own. Hopefully I've explained the largest changes from the previous site. If there are any questions or comments, please provide your feedback to the webmaster noted at the very bottom of the page. We want this page to reflect local pilots' needs.