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I was wondering where I could find a guide to the abbreviations used at reporting stations like on the Mesowest system. I see items like "-SN BR", "HZ", "+SN" etc. I was also curious how to read the cloud cover reports. I searched the NWS glossary but didn't find these type of specific items. Thank You! John
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John, this is a great question, let's try to get to the bottom of this. Often times when we look at weather observations they can get really confusing and it looks like a bunch of letters all mangled up. Here's an observation from the 15th of March in Salt Lake.
KSLC 150856Z 28012KT 4SM -SN BR SCT006 BKN012 OVC070 01/00 A2979 RMK AO2 PK WND 27026/0838 RAB30E46SNB46 SLP079 P0000 60000 T00110000 53029=
Wow, that's some crazy stuff! This weather observation is called a Metar report. It is used for recording weather observations.
John asked about SN and BR these are just standard abbreviations used by meteorologists for Snow and Mist. Using the National Weather Service Glossary, and scrolling to the letters you need, will give you the definitions of all of these.
Also John wanted to know about cloud cover. In the observation above which today we're only dissecting part of, it has cloud cover observations in layers. This is the BKN012 OVC070 part of the observation above. Cloud cover is measured in hundreds of feet. This particular observation means the clouds were broken at 1,200 feet and Overcast at 7,000 feet. We measure how broken or overcast the sky is with fractions. 8/8 of the sky covered means it is overcast while 5/8 to 7/8 of the sky covered would be broken.
Meteorologists, pilots and those interested in weather look at Metar observations to quickly assess the current and past weather situation.
If you'd like to learn more about decoding weather observations you can click on some of the links listed. It's fun to decode this if you're interested in weather and you learn about how observations are recorded.
Answered by KSL Meteorologist Dina Freedman.
