Searching for bad WX in MSFS 2020

[johnbow72 2,722]

In my search for bad weather today , I came across these two sites :

 

https://badbadweather.com/

 

https://wwweather.xyz/

 

Cheers

John

[fppilot 4,355]

You looking for inclement weather?  Or instead badly rendered weather?  Its not clear!  (bad pun)!

Edited November 7, 2021 by fppilot

[johnbow72 2,722]

9 minutes ago, fppilot said:

You looking for inclement weather?  Or instead badly rendered weather?  Its not clear!  (bad pun)!

The first please !! . LOL

[fppilot 4,355]

12 minutes ago, johnbow72 said:

The first please !! . LOL

The Los Angeles basin was near or below minimums both this morning and yesterday morning.

[KERNEL32 497]

2 hours ago, fppilot said:

The Los Angeles basin was near or below minimums both this morning and yesterday morning.

Yes and I got completely clear live weather @ KLAX, so badly rendered weather it is - as usual. Even at the moment of this post the METAR @ KLAX is 3SM OVC 006. MSFS? CLEAR/CAVOK and vis. over 100 miles. Nice.

So unrealistic to be able to climb to 30k feet in LA basin on most ANY day in MSFS and see for 150 miles (to the ground).

[Greazer 1,320]

https://www.windy.com/-Show---add-more-layers/overlays?thunder,32.380,-85.210,5

 

[johnbow72 2,722]

7 hours ago, Greazer said:

https://www.windy.com/-Show---add-more-layers/overlays?thunder,32.380,-85.210,5

 

Forgot about them , excellent site . TY

[Konterhalbe 295]

I use windy.com on a daily basis not only for flightsimming and I already knew badbadweather.com but world's worst weather is another great site I haven't come across yet.

Thanks for the hint John!

[jrw4 624]

I love the badbadweather site. Thanks for sharing.

I usually try to do this the easy way. Just look at the Skyvector site. You'll see that the airports are shown with dots of various colors: green (VFR), blue (MVFR), red (IFR), and purple (LIFR). Those "dots" also depict cloud coverage, ranging from solid (overcast) to an open circle (no significant clouds). Next, you can open the Layers tabs by clicking on Layers at the top right. Now open the Weather tab and select the MRMS Weather Radar checkbox. This will give you the available radar coverage. Other selections under this tab in the Airmet box include Icing, Instrument Flight Rules, and my favorite, mountain obscuration for when I want to practice scud running. You can also display wind arrows at various altitudes using the Winds Aloft checkbox at the bottom of the layers display, but you need to use the little gear icon to get to SFC, so that you display the surface winds.

Hope this helps. You could also go to meteoblue.com and select weather Maps. Then select Aviation and Clouds, so you can display all sorts of global maps showing all sorts of parameters derived from the same METEOBLUE Nowcasts as is the data feed for MSFS. It would be interesting to see how that relates to what the sim displays at one or another airport.

BTW, there is no guarantee that the sim will actually display the same weather as is reported in the real world METAR. The weather is good right now across the US, but there was really lousy visibility and low clouds in KAST. When I spawned a flight there, the weather depiction was simply awesome. On the other hand, KLAX (as noted above) showed up CAVU in spite of having real world marginal VFR at best. Apparently, the METEOBLUE aviation maps did not pick up the low clouds along the coast, so in this case, at least, the problem seems to be in the METEOBLUE data and not the sim depiction. I've tried this in a few airports and it seems consistently the case. The weather depiction seems to reflect the METEOBLUE data. The physical data of wind, temperature, and altimeter pressure all correspond pretty much to the METARs.

 

[sanh 823]

18 hours ago, KERNEL32 said:

Yes and I got completely clear live weather @ KLAX, so badly rendered weather it is - as usual.

The sim does not render visibility. The only time you will see low visibility is when the clouds are at ground level.

This has always been the case. I love flying to New Delhi where air pollution always results in low vis landings but its always good visibility in MSFS. I believe the devs said they would look at this in future.

[KERNEL32 497]

1 hour ago, sanh said:

The sim does not render visibility. The only time you will see low visibility is when the clouds are at ground level.

This has always been the case. I love flying to New Delhi where air pollution always results in low vis landings but its always good visibility in MSFS. I believe the devs said they would look at this in future.

Correct, but then the weather is usually off, but sometimes it works. It may be a timing thing but that is why I was talking about the clouds (which of course reduce vis at least inside the cloud) - METAR was KLAX 3SM OVC 006 - and sadly no clouds in sight. Happened today too. Oh well. Back to VFR bing earthing.

Edited November 7, 2021 by KERNEL32

[jrw4 624]

KLAX and the CA coast in general is kind of a special case. It has lots of local weather activity on the scale of tens of miles due to the presence of a marine layer, and the global depictions created so far by METEOBLUE do not appear to pick these up very well. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few updates provided by Asobo.

[JRBarrett 3,048]

2 hours ago, KERNEL32 said:

Correct, but then the weather is usually off, but sometimes it works. It may be a timing thing but that is why I was talking about the clouds (which of course reduce vis at least inside the cloud) - METAR was KLAX 3SM OVC 006 - and sadly no clouds in sight. Happened today too. Oh well. Back to VFR bing earthing.

In the case of coastal Southern California, forecasting the exact timing of clouds and low visibility can be very difficult, using a forecast model. This will not change in MSFS until the weather system starts takIng actual clouds and visibility from current METAR. 

This is not due to a bug or serious defect in the MeteoBlue model - it is just the nature of trying to accurately predict where and when clouds will form using a predictive model in the rather unique microclimate of the LA basin.

The following is the actual aviation forecaster’s technical discussion from the LAX NWS forecast office regarding the TAF for this evening:

KLAX...Moderate confidence in the 18Z TAF. There is a 30% chance
that cigs could linger until as late as 21Z today. There is a 20%
chance that cigs will arrive as early as 03Z this evening. There
is a 20% chance of an east wind component reaching 8 knots Monday
morning.

KBUR...Moderate confidence in the 18Z TAF. There is a 20% chance
that cigs will arrive as early as 05Z this evening. There is a
20-30% chance that cigs could linger until as late as 18Z Monday.

These forecasters are using the HRRR, a much higher resolution computer model than MSFS, and are literally “at” the airport, yet there is a lot of ambiguity as to the exact timing of when marine layer overcast will move in and dissipate for both LAX and BUR.

[KERNEL32 497]

13 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

In the case of coastal Southern California, forecasting the exact timing of clouds and low visibility can be very difficult, using a forecast model. This will not change in MSFS until the weather system starts takIng actual clouds and visibility from current METAR. 

This is not due to a bug or serious defect in the MeteoBlue model - it is just the nature of trying to accurately predict where and when clouds will form using a predictive model in the rather unique microclimate of the LA basin.

The following is the actual aviation forecaster’s technical discussion from the LAX NWS forecast office regarding the TAF for this evening:

KLAX...Moderate confidence in the 18Z TAF. There is a 30% chance
that cigs could linger until as late as 21Z today. There is a 20%
chance that cigs will arrive as early as 03Z this evening. There
is a 20% chance of an east wind component reaching 8 knots Monday
morning.

KBUR...Moderate confidence in the 18Z TAF. There is a 20% chance
that cigs will arrive as early as 05Z this evening. There is a
20-30% chance that cigs could linger until as late as 18Z Monday.

These forecasters are using the HRRR, a much higher resolution computer model than MSFS, and are literally “at” the airport, yet there is a lot of ambiguity as to the exact timing of when marine layer overcast will move in and dissipate for both LAX and BUR.

Jim,

Very informative and interesting - thank you! I cannot wait until Asobo focuses on this weather forecasting and visibility more. Will make for a much more interesting and challenging flight environment.

[JRBarrett 3,048]

2 hours ago, KERNEL32 said:

Jim,

Very informative and interesting - thank you! I cannot wait until Asobo focuses on this weather forecasting and visibility more. Will make for a much more interesting and challenging flight environment.

For a place like LAX (or any location along the Southern California coast) using full METAR to accurately get the “right” weather at airports is definitely the way to go, because even the highest resolution computer models simply can’t give a good prediction of exactly when and where low clouds will move in to a particular location when associated with the coastal marine layer.

Better and more in-depth control over visibility is also needed in the MSFS weather system. I have a hunch this may be deferred to the “major” upgrade of Live Weather that is planned for 2022, but perhaps we will see some improvements in SU7. What would be especially nice is to have an accurate depiction of a haze layer below a temperature inversion, which much better visibility above the inversion. This is very common in SoCal.