Best Aviation Weather Websites for Pilots

For aviation weather in the US, three free websites cover almost every need: aviationweather.gov for official observations, forecasts and the Graphical Forecasts for Aviation (GFA), 1800wxbrief.com for a recorded weather briefing and automatic alerts on your flight plan, and Windy for seeing how a weather system will move over the next few days. Most pilots end up using all three, plus whatever their EFB app pulls together.

Official briefing vs self-briefing: what the FAA expects

Under 14 CFR 91.103, the pilot in command must become familiar with all available information before a flight, and that includes weather reports and forecasts for any IFR flight or any flight away from the home airport. The rule does not name a provider. The FAA’s Advisory Circular 91-92, the Pilot’s Guide to a Preflight Briefing, makes it explicit that self-briefing is acceptable as long as you cover the full picture: adverse conditions, current weather, forecasts, winds aloft, NOTAMs and TFRs.

The difference with Flight Service is the record. A briefing through 1800wxbrief.com or by phone at 1-800-WX-BRIEF is logged, which documents what you were told if a question ever comes up. Many pilots self-brief on their tablet and then pull a quick briefing from Flight Service before departure for that reason.

Aviationweather.gov: the source behind every app

The National Weather Service’s Aviation Weather Center publishes the data that ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot and every other app display. Going straight to the source has two advantages: it is free, and you see each product the way forecasters intended, with its legend and valid times.

Graphical Forecasts for Aviation (GFA)

The GFA replaced the old text area forecast for the continental US. It is an interactive map with layers for ceilings and visibility, clouds, precipitation and weather, thunderstorms, winds, icing and turbulence, plus observations such as METAR flags and PIREPs. A time slider steps through the forecast hours. For a VFR pilot planning a two-hour cross-country, the ceiling and visibility layer answers the key question in seconds.

Prog charts, PIREPs, AIRMETs and SIGMETs

• Prog charts: forecast surface fronts, pressure centers and precipitation areas, useful for planning a trip one or two days out.
• PIREPs: reports from pilots in flight on cloud tops, icing and turbulence, filterable by altitude and age. Nothing beats a report from an airplane that just flew your route.
• G-AIRMETs and SIGMETs: advisories for IFR conditions, mountain obscuration, icing, turbulence and convection, drawn on the map.
• METAR and TAF: raw and decoded, searchable by airport or by area.
• Winds and temperatures aloft: as text tables or charts by altitude.

The site works on a phone, but the GFA and the advanced map really need a laptop or a tablet held sideways.

I open the PIREP layer before any flight with a cloud deck near my planned altitude. One report of icing in the tops at 6,000 feet is worth more than a page of model output.

1800wxbrief.com: Flight Service online

1800wxbrief.com is the web side of Flight Service, operated for the FAA by Leidos. A free account gives you:

• Online briefings in standard, abbreviated and outlook formats, built from your route, altitude and time, with every item logged.
• Flight plan filing for VFR and IFR, with options to activate and close VFR flight plans.
• ACAS, the Adverse Condition Alerting Service: once you file, it watches your route and sends email or text alerts for new TFRs, airport and runway closures, urgent PIREPs, SIGMETs, AIRMETs and Center Weather Advisories. It works with flight plans filed from apps such as ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot too.
• Specialists by phone, who can see your filed plan and its alerts when you call.

The web interface feels dated and the text-heavy briefing can run long. That is the price of a complete, recorded product, and for a student pilot learning to read weather, working through a full standard briefing is good training.

Windy: models and the big picture

Windy is not an aviation product, but pilots love it for one thing: animating forecast models over several days. You can switch between models such as ECMWF and GFS, then look at wind at different altitudes, cloud cover, cloud base, rain and thunderstorms. When two models disagree about a front three days out, you know the forecast is shaky.

The free version covers most of what a pilot needs. Premium raised its price to $34.99 a year at the end of 2024 and adds more forecast detail. Windy also shows airports with their METAR and TAF, which is handy, but none of it replaces the official products for a go or no-go decision.

I keep Windy open for the weekend outlook and switch to the GFA from the day before. That split works well for anyone who plans flights a few days ahead.

Weather products ranked by when you need them

Time before departure	What to check	Best source
3 to 5 days	Fronts, model agreement, general trend	Windy, prog charts
1 to 2 days	Prog charts, GFA, area forecast discussions	aviationweather.gov, weather.gov
Morning of	TAFs, GFA ceilings, AIRMETs, winds aloft	aviationweather.gov, EFB app
1 hour before	Full briefing, NOTAMs, TFRs, latest METARs	1800wxbrief.com or EFB briefing
In flight	ADS-B weather, PIREPs, ATIS	EFB with ADS-B receiver, Flight Service on the radio

Forecast discussions: the forecaster’s own words

One underrated free product sits on weather.gov: the Area Forecast Discussion from your local NWS office. Forecasters write it in plain language several times a day, and most offices include an aviation section explaining why they expect low ceilings to lift at noon or why they are not confident in the timing of a front. Read it alongside the TAF and the numbers make more sense.

Reading TAFs and METARs fluently remains the core skill, and most ground school courses spend serious time on it. Apps decode the codes for you, but a pilot who can read the raw line spots an amended TAF or a gusting wind faster than one waiting for the translation.

Weather once you are airborne

The websites stop at the runway, but the weather keeps changing. In flight, three sources take over. The ATIS or automated station at each airport along the route gives you the current wind, altimeter and sky condition. Flight Service on the radio can update a briefing, take a PIREP and pass along new advisories. And an ADS-B receiver feeds your tablet free radar, METARs, TAFs and advisories from ground stations, with a delay of several minutes on the radar picture. That delay is the reason pilots use datalink radar for the big picture, not for picking a path between thunderstorm cells.

Weather in EFB apps vs on the web

ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot both gather METARs, TAFs, radar, satellite, AIRMETs, SIGMETs, PIREPs and winds aloft into one map, and both generate a briefing for your route. Those app briefings are how most pilots self-brief today, and a flight plan filed from the app is still monitored by ACAS. For day-to-day flying, the app is faster.

The web sources still earn their place. The GFA shows more forecast layers than most apps, the forecast discussions are not in any EFB, and Windy’s model comparisons are unique. When turbulence or icing is the question, the AWC’s dedicated graphics give more detail than any app layer.