You don't need an internet connection, just the ability to send and receive SMS texts.
Register for an account.
Choose a dollar amount to preload into your account.
Text an airport code to this service at (541) 234-8444 and you will receive the weather back in a few seconds!
I fly in the Pacific Northwest for fun and wanted a way to quickly get weather as I flew from airport to airport. Sometimes the airports are remote, where only SMS service is available.
Additionally, I wanted to get the weather in my time zone instead of UTC. So SMS Aviation Weather was born.
The weather data delivered by this service is for INFORMATION ONLY! Do not use for flight planning!
First, lets get this out of the way - YOU CONSENT TO RECEIVE TEXT MESSAGES WHEN REQUESTING AVIATION WEATHER FROM THIS SERVICE. First you need a 4 character airport code like KPDX (Portland International Airport). Basically, you can just text KPDX to (541) 234-8444 and you will receive weather observations in UTC time. If you want to receive the weather observations adjusted for your time zone, first you need to determine your time zone code. Let's say you want your weather based on Mountain Time, and it's daylight savings time. In that case, you text KPDX MDT to (541) 234-8444, and you will receive the weather for KPDX with time offset to Mountain Daylight Time.
Time zones supported are:
This service utilizes weather published by aviationweather.gov.
This service uses a proprietary decoding algorithm to produce a short translation without losing details.
This service aims to decode every TAF/METAR requested. However, sometimes the TAF/METARs are not formatted correctly, or we haven't yet developed the algorithm to "understand" rarely used codes. You will not be charged for requests if they are not translated. We are always improving the service to be smarter in decoding TAF/METARs.
You can click one of the account preloading amounts above and pay for it via PayPal. As you make requests, we deduct the service fee of 5 cents per request until your account runs out. You will receive a text indicating that you are low when you have 10, 5 and 1 request left in your account.
You can contact the developer of the service at smsavwx@milsipr.net
It's not just about the money. The service is useful and even though it isn't a lot, 5 cents per request will keep it running into the future.