This evening I added another command to the SMS Service for retriving winds aloft forecast data from the National Weather Service. The command is “FD”, which is the product code for the textual winds aloft forecast. You can query the service with the code for a major airport, and the service will reply with the wind direction, wind speed, and temperature for each altitude. The response for the command “FD PDX” might look like this:
[FD PDX] 3000:3422 6000:2720+04 9000:2533+02 12000:2539-03 18000:2454-17 24000:2363-28 30000:227143 34000:237750 39000:237053So at 6000 feet, the wind is blowing from 270 at 20 knots, and the temperature is 4 degrees C. At 9000 feet the wind is coming from 250 at 33 knots, and the temperature has dropped to 2 degrees. They don’t give the temperature at 3000 feet.
See the SMS Services page for more information on this command.
