The EZWxBrief progressive app provides the capability to see the latest surface observations and EZForecast for most airports in the U.S. and southern Canada, but it also allows you to see the latest SIGMETs, both convective and non-convective that are issued by the Aviation Weather Center (AWC). Here's a quick reminder how you display SIGMETs on the EZWxBrief Map.
The Map in EZWxBrief can be launched from the primary sitemap menu from any page (except for the EZWxBrief Home page), and shown below while viewing the EZWxBrief Dashboard.
On portable devices such as the iPhone, it can be accessed via the hamburger menu icon (three horizontal lines) as shown below also from the EZWxBrief Dashboard. From that menu, select the Map option.
This will open up the Map where you can now add one or more layers to the map. SIGMETs are just one of the options in the layer selector menu. To add the SIGMETs layer, click or tap on the Layer button in the upper-left as shown by the red arrow in the image below. This will bring up the Map Layers menu.
Next, with the Map Layers menu open as shown below, press the downward pointing caret to open the SIGMETs layer to view the attributes. Make sure the SIGMETs layer is selected and then choose one or more of the attributes available within the menu. In the example below, the Convection and Convective Outlooks attributes has been selected to filter out all SIGMETs except for active convective SIGMETs and convective outlooks. Selecting the attribute All will display all SIGMET types including both convective and non-convective as well as International SIGMETs.
Only active SIGMETs are displayed. Non-convective SIGMETs (e.g., icing and turbulence) are valid for four hours and convective SIGMETs are valid for two hours (International SIGMETs can be valid for six hours). Given this, the EZDeparture Advisor™ time slider needs to be set to a departure time that is between the beginning and ending valid time of those SIGMETs. If you tap or click on the polygon that represents one of the SIGMETs, a tabular display will appear to show you the text associated with that SIGMET as shown below.
First, take note of the valid period of the SIGMET. In this case, the convective SIGMET is valid from 1655Z to 1855Z as shown above. Next, notice the current time is currently 1828Z. This means that in order to have this SIGMET rendered on the Map, the EZDeparture Advisor™ time slider needs to be set to a departure time that is between 1655Z and 1855Z. Moving the departure advisor outside of this time range will cause the SIGMET polygon to be removed from the Map.
Most pilots are weatherwise, but some are otherwise™
Dr. Scott Dennstaedt
Weather Systems Engineer
Founder, EZWxBrief™
CFI & former NWS meteorologist
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