CNET Editors' review
Meterologists, pilots, and others whose lives and livelihoods depend on the weather use METAR data to report and transmit weather information. NirSoft's MetarWeather is a free tool for decoding raw METAR reports from around the world. Airports, weather stations, and observers use METAR far more than any other reporting format, so this software gives you access to an unprecedented amount of high-quality data.
MetarWeather's interface is plain but clean and efficient. We clicked the blue Metar icon to download data online, though we could also open METAR files and even type METAR lines directly with a simple wizard that includes a METAR decoder. The tool for downloading Internet data let us specify known stations or search by country, state, and city. We quickly located the nearest METAR data source and selected it, and then clicked Get METAR Reports. MetarWeather quickly downloaded the latest report and displayed it in the main window's list view. Clicking it opened the report, which included the Station Name, ICAO call letters, country, location, elevation, time, temperature, visibility, sky conditions, remarks, and more. Next, we got a report for Lusaka, Zambia, which is a bit farther away than our local general aviation airport, the nearest METAR site. It's not a country but a continent, but we could also access reports from Amundsen-Scott Station and Pegasus Field in Antarctica. We could choose what columns the program displays, add grid lines, and make other optional changes, and also choose a variety of METAR source links from the toolbar, including NOAA, Aviation Digital Data Service, and Aviation Weather Brief.
We've tried many of developer Nir Sofer's free tools and never had a bad experience, and MetarWeather is as competent and easy to use as the others were. Pilots, travelers, mariners, and many others will be able to make good use of MetarWeather, which can access the latest weather data from around the world in real time, freely, with just an Internet connection. And weather bugs, how did you ever get by without raw METAR data?
Publisher's Description
From NirSoft:
The MetarWeather utility decodes METAR weather reports from around the world, and displays them in a simple weather report table. You can save the weather report into text, HTML or XML files. MetarWeather can decode METAR reports from a text file, or download the latest reports directly from the Internet.
What's new in this version: Version 1.70 has fixed the crash problem with ADDS download source.
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5.0 starsout of 2 votes
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"Best of the Best ..Trust me!"
Version: MetarWeather 1.60
Pros
why don't u try it ur self 1st?
no ad-ware no nagging just pure excellence for pros ..
i dl hundred of sw from d..l .com since 10 years ago .. and this only sw deserved my review..Cons
it only lacks to be minimized at system tray and needs small animation whenever refreshed .. that's all!!
Summary
ok, read all above .. i'm done writing .. let me just mouse away ..
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"Simple and fully functional"
Version: MetarWeather 1.56
Pros
Really good for decoding metars.
The list structure to present more than one metar is really good.
Allows to write a metar line and then the software will decode.
Allows loading or saving metar in to files.
Allows to change units presented.Cons
Nothing to report.
Summary
For those who dont have a clue of what is a metar, its a weather report made hourly normally for airports, its normally encoded in short terms for transmission purposes.
MetarWeather is a lightweight application that does what is itended for, without whistles and bells, just the simple application for a simple purpose.
By simple I mean that it has the right amout of features for what it does and even a few ones that really make it enjoyable. The unit conversion is quite a good feature, the metar line decoding is another good feature, and the possibility to save or load metar to files is really a good extra.
A good application, simple and with the right amount of features.
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