Preflight Planning Intelligence Based On Unique Radar
Mosaic
Pilots in Canada who have been looking wistfully south at their
counterparts in the U.S. using their iPhones and iPads for
pre-flight weather now have the same technology available to them.
Weather Decision Technologies (WDT) and ForeFlight have brought
Canadian radar to ForeFlight Mobile 3 HD, an intelligence and
flight support app for student, private, commercial, business
aviation, and military pilots.
ForeFlight Mobile 3 delivers zoomable, animated HD NEXRAD radar
and satellite for the continental United States, Alasaka, Hawaii,
and Puerto Rico – and now Canada. Beautiful, animated radar
graphics with indicators for lightning, hail, mesocyclones, echo
top height, and storm motion vectors offer pilots a sophisticated
view of the weather in the U.S and in Canada.
"Canadian pilots have long desired the same high quality radar
and satellite Slip Map capability available to pilots in the US and
we’re excited to be the first company to bring airport level
situational awareness to them," said Tyson Weihs, Co-Founder of
ForeFlight. "WDT is very proud of our new Canada radar mosaic, and
very happy to be collaborating with ForeFlight as the first
application developer to make use of our Canadian radar for
mobile,” said Mike Eilts, President and CEO of WDT.
WDT receives a raw radar data feed directly from Environment
Canada, utilizes all 24 elevation angles from the thirty C-band
Doppler radars and then blends the data with seventeen adjacent US
radar sites immediately south of the Canadian border using its
advanced radar processing system. The result is an ultra-high
resolution, 1-kilometer seamless 3-dimensional mosaic display of
radar over Canada, updated every ten minutes. Notably, the company
has created 3D radar imagery providing complete coverage of the
atmosphere from the ground up to 20 km MSL and has tailored the
radar data to remove beam blockage, ensuring superior, highest
quality radar for the entire country. The customized quality
control package is not available from any other weather data
provider, and has been developed to remove spurious echoes and
mitigate significant terrain blockage issues that exist throughout
the Canadian Rockies.
Specifically, WDT’s radar mosaic has the following
characteristics:
- 5-minute update frequency (10 minutes for Canada).
- 1-km horizontal spatial resolution.
- 20-km vertical resolution of 3D mosaic.
- Provides composite and base reflectivity products.
In addition to radar, ForeFlight Weather for Canada gives pilots
smooth and efficient access to raw METARs and TAFs, translations,
winds aloft, and satellite imagery. Pilots may search by airport
identifier and view weather information for thousands of airports.
Users can also add "Favorites" for frequent airports or view
"Recents" to see their last searched airports. The application
includes color coded indicators for current flight rules.
ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (04.15.24)
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