Section 3. Aviation Weather Cameras

  1. GENERAL

The FAA Weather Camera Program features an expanding network of hundreds of camera sites in Alaska, the CONUS, and Hawaii and over 175 sites hosted by NAV Canada, Canada's civil air navigation service provider. Weather cameras provide pilots in certain areas with snapshots of current conditions at a specific location, enabling pilots to have additional information for improved decision‐making.

  1. DESCRIPTION

Each aviation weather camera site has up to four cameras. The direction of each camera is provided with reference to a sectional chart. A “clear day” image is provided for reference and comparison with the latest image. Locations with cameras are marked on sectional charts and listed in the Chart Supplement Alaska, Section 2, Airport/Facility Directory, as well as under Section 4, Associated Data, FAA Aviation Camera Locations.

  1. AVAILABILITY

Camera images are available on the FAA's Aviation Weather Camera website at https://weathercams.faa.gov/. Images are generally updated every 10 minutes. The time of the last update is indicated on each image. Actual site conditions may differ from displayed images due to a variety of reasons (for example, rapidly changing weather conditions, image update frequency, and optical distortion). The images are used to improve situational awareness. They are not to be used to comply with regulatory requirements (for example, to determine weather minimums for IFR flight).

  1. FAA's AVIATION WEATHER CAMERA WEBSITE

In addition to the aviation weather cameras, the website offers the following information that pilots may use for flight planning:

  1. Weather advisories including AIRMETs and SIGMETs.

NOTE-

AIRMETs and SIGMETs are only available for the CONUS.

  1. Current information such as METARs, PIREPs, infrared satellite imagery, radar data, air temperatures, relative humidity, and wind information.
  2. Forecast information such as TAFs.
  3. Aeronautical information such as VFR planning, terminal area, IFR en route (low), and IFR en route (high) charts, TFRs, remote communication outlets (RCO) information (Alaska only), and airport information.