A METAR can report 10 miles of visibility and a thunderstorm at once

A METAR is an observation, not a forecast — a standardized snapshot of conditions at one airport, taken at a fixed moment. Four verified reports show how the same field sequence carries different weight depending on the weather: a calm clear morning at KRIL, thunderstorms sitting near KFMN while visibility still reads 10 statute miles, and two KBPT observations an hour apart as heavy rain drags visibility from 1 statute mile down to three-quarters.

Reading them side by side is what turns a memorized field order into a working skill.

How to read a METAR line by line

Every METAR runs in the same order: station identifier, observation time, wind, visibility, present weather, sky condition, temperature and dew point, altimeter, then any remarks. The FAA’s Surface Weather Observing order spells out that sequence, and its stability is the whole reason a report can be read at all — you never hunt for the wind group, because it is always in the same place.

Two things to fix before the examples start. First, a METAR is an observation, not a forecast: it records what was happening at that airport at that moment. A TAF is the predictive product, covering conditions that matter to aviation within 5 statute miles of the airport’s runway complex over a stated validity period. Same vocabulary, different job.

Second, the station identifier is the first clue about which unit system follows. US stations usually carry a four-letter code beginning with K. International stations carry a four-letter ICAO code without that prefix — and with it, meters of visibility and hectopascals of pressure instead of statute miles and inches of mercury.

METAR examples: four real reports decoded

Here are the four observations this piece works from, pulled from National Weather Service archives. Each is a complete, attributable report — not a constructed sample.

Clear and calm — KRIL

METAR KRIL 181553Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 16/13 A3030

September 18, 2026, 1553Z. The wind group reads 00000KT — calm, no direction to report.

Visibility is 10SM, the US shorthand for 10 statute miles. CLR signals no cloud layers worth reporting.

The temperature/dewpoint pair is where this report gets interesting: 16/13.

A 3°C spread is comfortable, but watch that number in other conditions — when temperature and dew point converge, fog or condensation is close behind. The altimeter sits at A3030, or 30.30 inches of mercury. AUTO flags an automated observation with no human observer on station.

Thunderstorms nearby, clear visibility — KFMN

METAR KFMN 152353Z 26003KT 10SM VCTS FEW080 BKN120 27/11 A3015 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT ALQDS PRESRR SLP153

September 16, 2026. Wind 260 at 3 knots.

Visibility 10 statute miles. And then VCTS — thunderstorms in the vicinity.

This is the report that makes the case for reading past the visibility field. The air at the field was calm and the prevailing visibility was as clear as the KRIL morning. The storm was close enough to be coded but not close enough to be overhead.

FEW080 and BKN120 describe a few clouds at 8,000 feet and a broken layer at 12,000 — and the broken layer is what counts as the ceiling, 12,000 feet above ground level.

Temperature 27°C, dew point 11°C — a 16°C spread, dry air, no fog risk here. Altimeter 30.15 inHg.

Then the remarks. AO2 marks an automated station with a precipitation discriminator, per the National Weather Service decoding key.

LTG DSNT ALQDS means lightning distant in all quadrants. PRESRR flags pressure rising rapidly. SLP153 gives sea-level pressure: 1015.3 hectopascals, reconstructed from the final three digits.

Rain and falling visibility — KBPT

METAR KBPT 091653Z 02022G36KT 1SM R12/2200V4000FT +RA BR SCT010 OVC019 22/22 A2966 RMK AO2 PK WND 02036/1648 SLP044 P0032 T02220222

METAR KBPT 091753Z 01029G44KT 3/4SM R12/2800VP6000FT +RA BR SCT011 OVC022 22/22 A2960 RMK AO2 PK WND 01044/1752 PRESFR SLP022 P0079 60234

Same station, one hour apart. This pair is the comparison the whole piece is built for.

Wind first: 02022G36KT becomes 01029G44KT. Sustained wind climbs from 22 to 29 knots, and the gust from 36 to 44. Both reports carry a gust group, which records a peak wind above the steady speed.

Visibility collapses. 1SM in the first report, 3/4SM in the second.

The RVR group — R12/2200V4000FT, then R12/2800VP6000FT — gives runway visual range, a more precise instrument reading for the specific runway. +RA is heavy rain, BR is mist. The sky is low: OVC019, then OVC022, ceilings of 1,900 and 2,200 feet.

Temperature and dew point are identical in both: 22/22. A zero spread. The air is saturated — which is exactly why BR appears alongside the rain.

The altimeter falls from 29.66 to 29.60 inHg, and the second report’s remarks carry PRESFR — pressure falling rapidly. SLP022 puts sea-level pressure at 1002.2 hectopascals.

The P-group tells the story in numbers: P0032 means 0.32 inches of precipitation since the last hourly report; P0079 means 0.79 inches in the following hour. The trailing 60234 is the six-hour total.

A note on what is not here. The research behind this piece turned up no verified snow or icing observation, no standalone fog report, and no non-K station reporting the same weather as any of the US examples. Rather than construct plausible-looking strings from the rules, those slots stay empty.

US versus ICAO: the same weather, two formats

Visibility is the sharpest divergence. A US report says 10SM; an international one writes 9999, which stands for 10 kilometres or more. Meters replace statute miles at many international locations, so a figure like 0800 means 800 meters — roughly half a mile, and a genuinely different situation from anything in the US examples above.

Pressure flips too. The US altimeter carries an A prefix and inches of mercury: A3030, A2960.

International reports use a Q prefix and hectopascals instead. Same physical quantity, two notations.

And the station identifier tells you which world you are in before you read a single number. A four-letter code starting with K is US. A four-letter ICAO code without that prefix is not — and the units that follow will match.

The mechanism behind SPECI

METARs go out hourly. When the weather changes enough between those routine reports, the station issues a SPECI — an unscheduled special observation that stands in for the next scheduled one.

The FAA’s Surface Weather Observing order defines what counts as “enough.” Shifts in visibility, ceiling, runway visual range, or wind all trigger one, as do events like a thunderstorm beginning or ending. Once the change is observed, the SPECI should go out as soon as practicable.

The KFMN archive shows this in miniature. The routine report at 2353Z carried VCTS and lightning in all quadrants; the archive then logs a SPECI. The retrieved excerpt does not identify which specific threshold was crossed — but the sequence is exactly what the rule predicts.

This matters to a traveler because the SPECI is often where the story turns. A routine report can look unremarkable while a special observation an hour later carries the ceiling drop or the wind shift that explains a hold or a diversion.

Decoding the remarks group

Everything after RMK is supplementary — and it is where the operational texture lives.

The NWS key names a longer list of automated-status indicators — PWINO, RVRNO, PNO, CHINO, FZRANO, TSNO, VISNO — each flagging a sensor that is missing or not reporting. For a reader trying to work out why a report looks thin, that list is the place to look.

What the retrieved material does not support is decoding a full pressure-tendency group beyond the rapid-rise and rapid-fall pair already covered. The exact numbers behind them need a deeper reference than the one pulled here.

Key terms

SPECI

A SPECI is an unscheduled aviation weather observation issued outside a station’s routine reporting cycle. FAA procedures make one mandatory once an observed change qualifies — significant shifts in visibility, ceiling, runway visual range, or wind, or events such as a thunderstorm beginning or ending — and call for it to go out as soon as practicable. Its arrival is the tell that conditions moved between two routine reports, which is why a sequence of observations is worth scanning for SPECIs and not only for hourly METARs.

VCTS

VCTS is the METAR code for thunderstorms in the vicinity of a station. It sits in the present-weather group, separate from the visibility and sky-condition fields a reader tends to check first. Because of where it lives in the string, a report can read as clear and calm at the top while an active storm warning waits further down.

ICAO

ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, is the body whose standards govern how international aviation weather reports are written. Under its conventions, visibility is given in meters and pressure in hectopascals, in contrast to US practice with statute miles and inches of mercury. For anyone moving between the two systems, that is the divide that matters — the same weather described in two different sets of units.

Remarks group

The remarks group is the trailing section of a US observation, introduced by the code RMK, where supplementary data is appended. It carries indicators such as AO2 for an automated station with a precipitation discriminator, the PRESRR and PRESFR pressure-tendency codes, and SLPppp for sea-level pressure. A report that looks complete in its main fields can still hold a rapid pressure change or a distant lightning strike here and nowhere else.

Questions? Answers.