An automated system (currently FMQ-23) is utilized, but all of the visual observation elements (visibility, present weather/precipitation, and sky cover) are taken manually. All automatic data from the two FMQ towers, located at the skiway and the Clean Air Sector, is received via Mesotech’s “Aviation Weather Advisor” software. During the summer season, when flight operations are in progress, the observations are taken every hour, at 10 minutes prior to the top of the hour. During the winter season, and when not supporting aircraft during the summer, only the 4 synoptic observations (0 UTC, 6 UTC, 12 UTC, 18 UTC) are observed and transmitted every 24 hours. The remaining 20 hours of observations are recorded as “local” observations and contain only the automatic observation elements received from the tower via AWA.
The “Skiway” tower is located approximately 1000-1200 meters to the Grid South of the main station, at roughly the midpoint of the skiway. The “Clean Air” tower is located in the Clean Air sector, approximately 800 meters to the Grid North of the main station. The Clean Air tower is also roughly 100 meters to the Grid West of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) instrument tower. The instrumentation available at each tower is slightly different; the Skiway tower has only an anemometer and 3 pressure sensors, while the Clean Air tower has an anemometer, two Vaisala temperature sensors, and 3 pressure sensors. The Skiway tower also has a visibility sensor and present weather sensor, which are only installed and operational from mid-November to mid-February (this data is merely used as a check against our manual observations and is not officially logged).
The following files are ASCII text with slight variations in their convention over the record:
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Files ending in .SRF (1988-1994)
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Files ending in .SFC (1995-1997)
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Files ending in .sfc (1998-present)
The column labels are
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day of the month (DD)
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time (HHMM)
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visibility (V;m)
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weather observed (OB)
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temperature (T(C);degC)
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wind direction (WIND)
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wind speed (WIND)
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pressure (PRES;hPa)
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altimeter (ALT;m)
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remarks (REM)
From 1988-1998 the visibility and weather observed are in the same column.