Weather in Pilot EFB lives in the Brief tab. The tab has two modes behind one switch: Flight Brief builds a briefing package for a whole route, and Stations - this chapter - is the idle watch-list: the airports you keep an eye on between flights, each with its live weather. The line at the foot of every weather screen - "Reference only - verify officially." - is the module's standing framing.

Watch an airport

On the Brief tab, switch to Stations and tap the + button (bottom-right).
Choose Add a station - the same menu also watches a region's enroute NOTAMs (Add a FIR NOTAM) and organises stations into folders (Create a group).
Search by ICAO code, name or city - "EGLL", "Heathrow" and "London" all find the same airport - and tap the result to watch it. The search stays open, so several airports can be added in one go.

The add-station search with KJFK typed: a result row reading KJFK John F. Kennedy International with a plus icon, above the existing watch-list and the keyboard — Search by code, name or city; a tap on the result starts watching the airport.

Watching costs nothing and is not capped at your home base - add every airport you care about. The list is yours to curate: swipe a card left to stop watching, with an undo if the swipe was a slip.

The watch-list at a glance

Each watched station is one card: the ICAO and airport name, a flight-rules badge (VMC here; the badge follows the station's current category), an age pill counting from the observation time, and the raw METAR verbatim with its source and fetch time underneath. No paraphrase stands in for the report - the raw text is always the headline.

The Brief tab in Stations mode: 4 stations watched, a Flight Brief and Stations mode switch, and station cards for EGLL London Heathrow, EGKK London Gatwick and EHAM Amsterdam Schiphol - each with a VMC badge, an age pill of a few minutes, the raw METAR text and a source line naming SADIS UK Met Office or aviationweather.gov — The watch-list: raw METARs, flight-rules badges and ages - every card attributed to its source.

Two honesty details worth noticing in that frame: the source line differs per station (SADIS from the UK Met Office, aviationweather.gov elsewhere) - the app names where each report actually came from, not a generic "live data" - and the age pill counts from the observation, not from when the app happened to download it. Offline, the list keeps its cached reports and a banner says exactly that: cached data, pull to refresh when you reconnect.

The station workbench

Tap any card and the station opens into a tabbed workbench. The segment strip scrolls sideways to reach the later tabs:

Segment	What it shows
Airport	The airport's reference details
Summary	METAR, forecast, NOTAM count and winds in one scroll
METAR	The full observation, raw and decoded
TAF	The full forecast with its timeline
NOTAMs	The station's NOTAMs, raw text kept
Weather Charts	The wider picture - hazards, SIGWX, imagery

The EGLL station workbench on its Summary segment: the raw METAR with a decoded strip for wind, ceiling, visibility, QNH and temp/dewpoint, a Forecast TAF card with an IMC badge reading worst forecast from 02:00Z, and a NOTAMs card reading 27 active, 13 upcoming with a Verify with official NOTAM sources line — The Summary segment: observation, forecast outlook and NOTAM count in one scroll - with the verify-officially line where it belongs.

The Summary's forecast card grades itself on the worst period of the TAF - a VMC afternoon with thunderstorms forecast overnight shows the IMC badge, not the comfortable now.

Read a METAR

The METAR segment keeps a strict order: the raw report first, in monospace with its source and observation time on the card - then the decode underneath, supplementing the raw text rather than replacing it.

The METAR segment for EGLL: VMC and Steady trend badges with an 11 minutes ago age pill, the raw METAR labelled SADIS UK Met Office with its observation time, a decoded strip for wind, ceiling, visibility, QNH and temp/dewpoint, and the start of the decoded card listing observation time, fetch time and Visual Flight Rules — Raw first, decoded underneath - with the observation time, fetch time and flight rules named explicitly.

Further down the METAR decode: cloud and ceiling lines reading no clouds detected and no ceiling reported, an estimated cumuliform cloud base from the temperature spread, temperature, altimeter and QNH with a 3-hour trend, a note that AUTO means a fully automated report, and a Personal minimums card reading Personal ADM guidance only - not a certified go/no-go tool — The decode explains what the code said - including what it did not say - and the personal-minimums comparator keeps its own disclaimer.

Things the METAR view does for you, all visible in those frames:

Ages honestly. The pill counts from the observation; an ageing observation escalates to "Aging - refresh recommended" and, past three hours, "Over 3h old - refresh before use".
Decodes the silences. "No clouds detected" and "No ceiling reported" are decoded as exactly that - absence of data is never presented as clear skies, and an AUTO report is flagged as having no human observer.
Compares against your personal minimums if you set them - ceiling, visibility, wind and gust thresholds - and the card carries its own framing verbatim: "Personal ADM guidance only - not a certified go/no-go tool."
Breaks wind into runway components for the station's runways, and keeps the trend groups (BECMG, TEMPO, NOSIG) in their raw form.

Read a TAF

The TAF segment shows the raw forecast first, then a validity card and a period-by-period timeline.

The TAF segment for EGLL: the raw TAF verbatim labelled SADIS UK Met Office, with PROB30 and TEMPO groups for showers and thunderstorms, above a validity card reading Valid 25 18:00Z to 27 00:00Z, 30 hours, with a green Valid for 28h 29m pill and the issue and fetch times — The raw TAF and its validity window - the freshness pill grades the window, not the issue age.

The freshness pill here works differently from the METAR's, on purpose. A TAF is reissued only every few hours but stays in force for 24 to 30, so the current, authoritative forecast is routinely hours old - grading it by issue age would cry wolf. Instead the pill follows the validity window: "Valid for 28h 29m" while in force, "Expires in ..." with a note that a newer TAF may be available in its final stretch, and "Expired - refresh for current TAF" only once the window has actually ended.

The weather picture

The Weather Charts segment opens the wider view around the station, organised into five families:

Family	What it holds	Tier
Hazards	SIGMET / AIRMET hazards on a map	Free
Significant Weather	WAFS high-level SIGWX forecast	Pro
Upper Air	Winds and temperatures aloft, meteogram	Pro
The Sky	Satellite, surface pressure and radar imagery	Free
Advisories	Volcanic ash, tropical cyclone and space weather	Free

The Weather Charts segment for EGLL: a red hazards header reading 158 active hazards - TS, VA, TC, nearest about 90 nautical miles, over a UK map with the EGLL marker and red SIGMET polygons near the Channel, a Not for navigation attribution line, links to the map key and how to read this, and a Source line naming NOAA AWC and SADIS with the fetch time — The hazards map: live SIGMETs and AIRMETs around the station - marked Not for navigation, with its sources named.

The chart family cards below the hazards map: Significant Weather reading 15 CB, 15 turb, 16 jets for AREA C, Upper Air reading FL530 222 degrees at 21 knots minus 50 Celsius with a freezing level near 11,000 ft, The Sky with a live UK infrared satellite tile, and Advisories counting 7 tropical cyclone and 17 volcanic ash messages — The family cards each lead with their live headline - SIGWX and Upper Air are part of Pro.

The Sky family detail: a region picker set to United Kingdom, a Satellite card with the latest infrared frame fetched 5 minutes ago, credited to EUMETSAT, with a note to verify timing with an official source, and the top of a Surface Pressure card based on Deutscher Wetterdienst data — The Sky: live satellite, surface pressure and radar - each frame credited and timestamped.

Every map and chart carries the same two habits: the imagery is credited to its producer (NOAA AWC, SADIS, EUMETSAT, Deutscher Wetterdienst), and anything map-shaped is marked Not for navigation.

Winds aloft Pro

Winds aloft (from the Summary segment, the Upper Air family or the foot of the METAR view) is the level-by-level table: direction, speed and temperature from the surface to the tropopause, with a bar per level and the freezing level estimated.

The Winds aloft screen for EGLL: a winds and temperatures table from FL530 down to FL100, each row with a direction arrow and degrees, a bar chart of speed in knots, and temperature - for example FL390 217 degrees at 23 knots and minus 55 — Winds and temperatures aloft, level by level.

Look back 30 days Pro

Each METAR and TAF view links to its 30-day history - the reports archived on your device, so you can see how the day actually developed. The archives need you signed in: a free account starts a 14-day trial of the full history, and after that the archives are part of Pro.

Weather alerts

Settings > Notifications > Weather alerts turns the watch-list into push alerts. Four alert types, each explained on its own switch: Below VFR, TAF amendments & corrections, Improved to VFR, and Personal minimum breaches (evaluated on your device only - your minimums never leave it). The screen's own caveat is the honest one to repeat here: detection is not continuous or dispatch-grade monitoring, and missing weather never means conditions are clear.

Further down Weather alerts: the Improved to VFR and Personal minimum breaches switches with their captions, a Personal minimums link for setting thresholds, a note that detection is not continuous or dispatch-grade monitoring and missing weather never means conditions are clear, and a Watched airports list with EGKK marked Station watch — The watched-airports list drives the alerts - and the screen states its limits in plain terms.

Pro The free tier monitors your single highest-priority location - with no setup, that is your home base. Alerting on every location you watch, and per-location alert tiers, belong to Pro. Muting is never gated: silencing a location is always free, and frees its slot.

Weather on iPad

On iPad, Stations gets its own place in the side rail - the watch-list is one tap from anywhere, with the Brief tab keeping the flight-briefing side. The cards spread into the full width, raw METARs on one line.

The Stations screen on iPad: a side rail with the Stations icon active, a 4 stations watched header, and full-width station cards for EGLL, EGKK, EHAM and LFPG - each with a VMC badge, an age pill, the one-line raw METAR and its source, with the Reference only - verify officially line at the foot — Stations on iPad: its own rail destination, full-width cards, same honest anatomy.

Where next

Home - the home-base METAR and TAF glance cards that surface this module on the dashboard.
Duty & FTL - the other half of the pre-flight picture: where you stand against your duty limits.
Free vs Pro - the exact line between the free weather surfaces and the Pro ones.