Weather Resources

I finally scheduled my solo x-country for the coming Thursday. In preparation I thought I'd list all my weather sources so they are accessible through this site:
1-800-WXBRIEF and DUATS being the only FAA approved sources, but there are otehr great sites that help get the overall picture:

• Weather Underground at http://www.wunderground.com/US/CA/San_Jose.html.
• NOAA's National Weather Service http://adds.aviationweather.gov/
• Present Weather Sympol descriptions http://adds.aviationweather.gov/metars/wxSymbols_anno1.pdf
• AOPA Weather http://www.aopa.org/members/wx/
• Pilot Weather Briefing http://www.pilotweatherbriefing.com
• Naval Research Laboratory Satelite Products http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/projects/sat_products.html
• Our local Lick Observatory provides great insights to weather development around my local field at Reid Hillview. Webcams from up high come in handy when the mornings are overcast with low ceilings. http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/techdocs/MH_weather/
• UNISYS Weather...who would have thought http://weather.unisys.com/
• AOPA's Weather training http://www.aopa.org/asf/online_courses/skyspotter/

I also found a real kick butt flight path tool by aviationweather.gov which can be launched from http://adds.aviationweather.gov/fpt_application. It's all the other tools on steroids as it overlays all the information, lets you choose altitude and time segment.

Here is the METAR and TAF decoder

Here are the Surface Weather Chart Symbols

Weather.com offers a desktop weather realtime application that gives a very nice quick overview. The application can be downloaded at: http://desktopfw.weather.com/services/desktop/help/downloads.html