obPedant: Not ASCII. ITA2/Baudot.
ASCII was, from the outset, a 7-bit code. Where as Baudot is a 5-bit code intended for teletypewriter.
My citation is 10 years maintaining ancient mainframe software for exchanging meteorological data on teletype circuits in ASCII, Baudot, and even more exotic codes.
As mentioned in the NOAA press release, it’s because they’re finally getting around to fielding a standardized weather terminal (i.e., the computers the forecasters use to do their job) that understands lower case. Finally breaking free of the historical tyranny of upper-case-only teletype.
ETA: NB: The fielding of AWIPS II means forecasters CAN use lower-case, but not that they’re obligated to.
i.e., aviation products (one of the more important and popular classes of alphanumeric meteorological product) will probably remain upper-case, because historical inertia. (And conservatism… these things are usually intended for automatic processing, not human eyeballs, so the consumers never cared about being yelled at, but throwing non-value-added novelty at a pre-existing system may provoke unnecessary software failures.)
Oh that brings back horrible nightmares … thanx for the correction …
[quote=“Leo_Bloom, post:36, topic:777370”]
I believe just a few weeks ago they decided to not use all caps any more.
Hmmm…
The next thing you know weather information for pilots will be in plain, easy to understand language.
METARs decoded - METAR HELP The blue CAPS at the top of the page is what a pilot gets (not in nice little boxes)
Not really that hard to understand coded METARs but still…
My understanding is that, in the old days, space was at such a premium that things had to be coded.
I’m undecided on plain text aviation reports and forecasts.
I’m definitely against decoded TAFs and METARs. I use a Jeppesen electronic flight bag app and it can decode METARs and TAFs but the decode sometimes misses important information that affects operational decisions such as how much fuel to carry and which alternates to plan for. I always look at the raw forecasts so I know I’m not missing anything.
If the raw reports and forecasts were already in plain text then that would be better than a decode. The downside is that, for those of us still flying in the dark ages, plain text means longer reports which means more paper in the flight deck. For someone who is fluent in coded METARs/TAFs there is no great benefit to plain text and, if anything, plain text is harder to reader because there are more words to convey the same amount of information.
For pilots who don’t fly regularly and aren’t as fluent with coded reports, plain text could have a safety benefit.
Agree completely.
If you read this stuff every day, plain text just adds noise. OTOH, if you’re not sure what FZDZ-GR means, having that decoded could save your life.
Just a minor nitpick and some incidental info. That cite says “KORD-Station ID – In this example, K refers to a North American Station and ORD is the three letter id for O’Hare”.
No, American-centric doofus who wrote that guide, “K” does NOT refer to a “North American station”, it refers to an American (i.e.- US) station. A Canadian station code would begin with a “C” (and for ICAO airport codes, in Canada and the US they are almost always followed by the same three letters as the IATA airport code, as in KORD for O’Hare or CYYZ for Toronto Pearson). Passengers would normally see the IATA code on their baggage tags – ORD, YYZ, etc. but the pilot would be heading for KORD or CYYZ.
The use of “K” for ICAO US airport code prefixes is actually related to the use of “K” for radio and TV broadcast station call signs in the west and “W” in the east, and the use of “N” for US aircraft registration prefixes. All three are part of the same international country-prefix letter codes assigned to the US as the international ITU country prefixes.
Europe has a completely different geography-centric system where the ICAO code bears no first-letter relationship to the ITU prefix, nor three-letter relationship to the IATA code. Thus London Heathrow is IATA code LHR but ICAO code EGLL – “E” for northern Europe and “G” for Great Britain.
And even if you do read the stuff every day, if you live in a warm climate you may very rarely see something like FZDZ-GR and might have to look it up just to be sure ;).
Yeah. My routes have always covered all the US, so we get tropics and we get snow and everything in between. But rarely freezing fog.
From the Olden Dayes I recall one grizzled old guy who’d grab the 15 foot long printout of weather, hold it with arms spread wide, squint at it, turn it upside down and squint at it again then pronounce: “Moderate mixed tornadoes. OK then, we’re going.” Then fold it back up and put it away.
“Moderate mixed tornadoes” is sorta what you get if you take the total US weather over a year and stick it all in a blender. I still use that line. 
There was a ewe that was never pregnant. She was always under the wether.