METAR(1)

🛬 METAR(1) — the FlightGear weather-grabbing demo tool ✨

okay so bestie, buckle up, we're talking about metar, a demo utility for FlightGear — yes the whole thing is literally a demo, and it still ate 💅

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🌤️ NAME

metar — demo METAR utility for FlightGear

📜 SYNOPSIS

metar -h | --help | [-v | --verbose] [-e elevation | --elevation
elevation] [-r | --report | -c | --command-line] <list of ICAO airport
IDs or METAR strings>

💖 DESCRIPTION

so metar is a demo utility for FlightGear, and what it does is iconic: it pulls a METAR (that's encoded weather information, iykyk) for one or more airports you name, grabs it from the Internet, and shows it to you in a form that is actually user-readable — no cap, no cryptic blob chaos 🦋

and optionally?? it can also print the command-line arguments you'd need to start fgfs(1) at the current time with the weather conditions that are in effect. like, it just hands you the launch line. main character energy fr fr 👑

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -h, --help — shows you the usage information and dips. that's it. that's the whole vibe 💫
• -v, --verbose — spills the debugging information while it's doing the required operation. lowkey nosy, but make it useful 🔍
• -e elevation, --elevation elevation — sets the airport elevation to elevation meters. yes, meters. metric girlies stay winning 📏
• -r, --report — prints the weather information right on your screen in a user-readable form. the classic. the moment. 🌸
• -c, --command-line — prints the command-line arguments required to start FlightGear at the current time with the weather conditions in effect. copy, paste, fly 🛫

🚦 EXIT STATUS

• metar exits with 0 on success 💚
• exits with 1 if the syntax of the command-line arguments is wrong, or if an error occurs 💀

🌐 ENVIRONMENT

• HTTP_PROXY — specifies the HTTP proxy to use. it must be in the form http://host:port/. like, that exact shape, don't freestyle it 🎀

🍓 EXAMPLE

print the current weather information for KSFO and KOAK:

$ metar KSFO KOAK

print the current weather information for KSFO, plus the command-line arguments required to start FlightGear with the weather conditions in effect:

$ metar -c KSFO -r KSFO

print the given METAR string as a user-readable weather report:

$ metar "LOWL 161500Z 19004KT 160V240 9999 FEW035 SCT300 29/23 Q1006 NOSIG"

ngl that last one is the party trick — you can just hand it a raw METAR string and it translates the whole thing for you 🧚

👀 SEE ALSO

• fgfs(1)
• the FlightGear wiki "Weather reports" page

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and that's the page, bestie 🫶 this was FlightGear's very own man page, dated 2017-06-25, and it's serving source-and-version realness — go read fgfs(1) next, mwah 💜