The colours, (red, amber, yellow, green, white, blue) abbreviated to 3 letters, give a brief summary of the cloudbase and/or the visibility, but are skewed towards the 'bad' end of the weather, as they are meant to distinguish between weather suitable for different types of instrument approaches. A military pilot might decide to make a trip "providing the weather is at least green at destination", so a quick call tells them that the weather is in fact 'amber' so there is no need to listen to the whole report - the trip is off!

The civilian GA fair weather pilot is probably only interested in "white" or "blue". NB: A code of blue, the best, does not mean flying will be possible as they take no account of the wind - it could be blowing a gale. If a colour is given, this could be as a result of either a low cloudbase with good visibility, or a high cloudbase with low visibility, or poor on both counts. eg: A colour of red could be given either because the cloudbase is lower than 200 feet, or because the visibility is less than 800 metres, or both.

A code of green might sound good, but if given for visibility reasons, could mean VFR was illegal in the Class "D" airspace around some military bases, so be careful.

A code of black indicates the airbase is closed for non-weather reasons.

Cloud is only noted for these colour codes if it is 'scattered' or worse.

These codes, along with many others to do with METARs, TAFs and the UK METFORMs, are explained in just one section of the Pre-Preflight Checklist advertised below.

And now you can read a Flyer Magazine Weather Watch Article on the same subject by clicking on the link towards the bottom of the page.

- If you need a good aide-memoire, written by a G.A. pilot for G.A. pilots, on all the rules, legalities and safety tips you need to consider before a flight in the UK, consider the Pre- Preflight Checklist as favourably reviewed in Flyer, Pilot Magazine, International Flight Training, AOPA's Light Aviation and GASCO's Flight Safety Review. Click on the yellow front page icon here on the left. A "must" for anyone trained in the US, and invaluable for UK qualified and student pilots!

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