A brief walk around Alaska’s online aviation weather camera program.
May 2015-
A few months ago, the FAA announced the deployment of its all-new Aviation Weather Camera program. I was curious, so recently I took a look around the site—and I have to say, it’s incredible.
The design of the site is so simple, I felt like a power user on my first try. The FAA explained it this way: “This new route based information tool (RBIT) features navigational planning on an interactive map with easily accessible images and other weather data.” In short, it’s almost unbelievably intuitive.
I watched the video tutorials (all are between one and three minutes long—and worth the time) in addition to clicking around by myself to discover how the tools work. Here’s a quick overview.
A graphic interface
Cruise over to alaska.faa.gov using your favorite browser. The map interface (see photo 01) will be familiar to any users of Google Maps: you move around the map by clicking and holding the mouse button to get “the hand,” and zoom using the mouse wheel (or the slider bar in the upper right edge of the map). Terrain and satellite views are available; choose your preference in the upper right.
Each camera site is color-coded (green represents all FAA camera sites; locations in purple are classified as being “in maintenance,” while light blue represents third-party cameras) and all are tagged with the name/location. This interactive site was designed for supplemental flight planning purposes only (see photo 02, top right).
Clicking on a marker will create a pop-up-style Quick View of all of the cameras at the site. Camera images are displayed as thumbnails, with any METAR information below that. Most sites have four distinct views, and all have at least two views.
Selecting one of the camera views brings up a Site Detail window with that camera’s image as the main photo (see photo 03, right). A handy time/date stamp at the top left of the image allows you to see exactly when it was taken. Other camera views remain visible at the bottom—simply click a thumbnail to select a different directional view.
Site Detail includes several tabs. The Site Information tab allows a user to see latitude/longitude, elevation, identifiers and more. Other tabs are for METARs (see photo 04, right), TAFs (see photo 05, page 55) and Loop.
Along the right side of the Site Detail window when the Current Image tab is open, you’ll find a clear-day view of the location, along with a camera alignment view superimposed on the Sectional (see photo 06, page 55). Current times (both local and UTC) are displayed at the top right edge of the window.
The speed of a camera loop can be customized to run faster or slower, to begin or end at a particular frame, etc. Keep in mind the images used in the loop are considered historical and may be up to six hours old. One pilot’s perspective
Pilots can easily view any or all of the sites along a particular flight route, check conditions at a certain site or sites and configure the data to suit their own needs.
Alaska operators I talked with told me that they regularly use the new Alaska Aviation Weather website. Andy Greenblatt, CEO of Shadow Aviation, Inc. in Fairbanks, does on-demand charter work and fulfills government contracts.
With the U.S. Forest Service, for example, certain observation activities require conditions that, in Greenblatt’s words, must be “better than VFR,” with specific lighting and wind in order to successfully perform the work. Greenblatt and the agencies can easily evaluate for go/no-go using the weather cameras—saving money, time and aggravation.
Cameras located at certain critical areas in Alaska can make a huge difference for both commercial and recreational flyers. AWOS in Alaska, Greenblatt says, is fairly reliable, but it doesn’t tell you what it’s doing inside a mountain pass.
“At Lake Clark Pass,” Greenblatt explains, “there are cameras right inside , on both sides, which is a big help.” He continues, “With the cameras at Anaktuvuk Pass, I can see if I need to go over the top, or through the valley.”
No system is perfect, so sometimes there can be outages—or, in the winter months, just not enough light for cameras to give a pilots a decent view of the ground conditions. “In the summer, the cameras are huge,” said Greenblatt. “I think everyone uses them, all the time.”
The side menu
The side menu (see photo 07, page 56) is tagged with descriptions of the function of each button. Opening the sidebar (the second button from the top) will give you the means to turn on and off data layers for METARs, TAFs and UAS notifications across the whole map (i.e., globally).
The side menu also allows you to tailor the site for anticipated future use. You can center the map at your location (you must have geolocation enabled in your browser to do this); create bookmarks (if you wish to save a certain location, configuration and zoom level for quick retrieval), and set or clear a default location.
Creating custom lists
Pilots can go even further in customizing the website for multiple routes or locations. Site List, available in the blue menu that runs across the top of the website, is where you can see all of the cameras in alphabetical order and filter the list for particular sites (see photo 08, page 56).
Here you can bookmark a specific list of locations along a route (it allows up to 10) and then save your selections as a custom list (see photo 09, page 56). Any of your commonly-flown routes can be conveniently accessed from your browser at a later time.
Future plans
Surely this new, improved website is a great service to those who need to navigate around Alaska by air on a regular basis. The increase in safety for pilots and passengers may not be easily quantifiable, but there’s no question it serves as another useful tool for pilots to have at their disposal for decision making. Wouldn’t you like to have these panoramic views and weather overlays for the locales you regularly fly to? I think I would!
The FAA is responsible for investigating reports of malfunctions, getting a weather camera back online and any routine maintenance. So far, so great—it seems to me. The agency is still determining whether the program will serve as a model for other regions in the United States, or if it will remain unique to Alaska. Other entities around the world have taken notice, though, and are developing similar systems. See the sidebar (page 54) for more details and the history of the aviation weather camera program.
Try it out
For our Piper Flyers in Alaska, we’d love to hear how you’re using the Alaskan Aviation Camera Program in your flight planning. Or if you haven’t yet tried it, give it a go—and report back to the rest of us. Log on to the member forum and post your comments under the “Alaska Aviators” thread.
Heather Skumatz is managing editor for Piper Flyer. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
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FAA Aviation
Weather Cameras – Alaska
alaska.faa.gov
