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Preflight Weather Briefing Checklist for VFR Pilots

Aviation Weather Guide · 7 min read

A complete preflight weather briefing isn't just checking if it's sunny outside. For a VFR flight, you need to build a picture of conditions along the entire route — departure, en route, destination, and alternate — and at the times you'll actually be there. Here's a structured checklist to work through before every flight.

Before You Start: Know Your Personal Minimums

Legal VFR minimums are the floor, not the goal. Before reviewing any weather data, be clear on your own personal minimums — the conditions below which you won't fly regardless of legality. For example:

• Ceiling: 3,000 ft AGL or higher (well above the 1,000 ft MVFR threshold)
• Visibility: 5 SM or greater
• Wind: no more than 15 knots crosswind component for your aircraft
• No flight into known or forecast IMC

Adjust these based on your experience, aircraft, and the specific flight. The point is to set them in advance — not in the moment when you're already at the airport and eager to fly.

The Preflight Weather Checklist

✅ 1. Surface Observations (METARs) — Departure, En Route, Destination, Alternate

Pull the current METAR for your departure airport, your destination, and any alternates. For longer cross-countries, check METARs at airports along your route as well.

What to look for:

• Flight category (VFR, MVFR, IFR, LIFR) — see our flight categories guide
• Ceiling height and coverage (BKN/OVC layers)
• Visibility — note any restrictions (BR = mist, FG = fog, HZ = haze, RA = rain)
• Wind speed and direction — calculate crosswind component for your aircraft
• Temperature/dewpoint spread — a spread of 3°C or less suggests fog or low clouds are likely
• Precipitation — RA (rain), SN (snow), TS (thunderstorm)

✅ 2. Terminal Forecasts (TAFs)

The METAR tells you conditions right now. The TAF tells you what's forecast at your departure and destination airports for the next 24–30 hours. Pull TAFs for both and any alternates.

What to look for:

• Conditions at your planned departure time — not just the current base conditions
• Any TEMPO or PROB groups during your ETA window at the destination
• FM groups indicating a front or major shift during your flight
• Whether the TAF validity period covers your entire flight window

✅ 3. Winds Aloft Forecast (FB)

The Winds and Temperatures Aloft Forecast (FB) gives you forecast winds at various altitudes for your route. Available from aviationweather.gov.

What to look for:

• Winds at your planned cruise altitude — headwind, tailwind, or crosswind component
• Temperature aloft — important for density altitude calculations and icing risk
• Significant changes in wind direction that might indicate frontal activity

✅ 4. NOTAMs — Departure and Destination

Check NOTAMs (Notices to Air Missions) for your departure and destination airports. The FAA NOTAM system is searchable at notams.aim.faa.gov.

What to look for:

• Runway closures — is your planned runway available?
• Navaid outages — ILS, VOR, PAPI, or VASI out of service
• Taxiway closures — affects your taxi route, especially at unfamiliar airports
• Construction or unusual ground activity
• TFRs (Temporary Flight Restrictions) — see below

✅ 5. TFRs (Temporary Flight Restrictions)

TFRs can appear with little notice and carry serious consequences — including certificate action — if violated. Always check before flying, especially near major cities, sporting events, or in politically active times.

Where to check: tfr.faa.gov or via your EFB app (ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot, etc.).

✅ 6. PIREPs (Pilot Reports)

PIREPs are real-time reports from other pilots describing actual conditions in flight — turbulence, icing, unusual cloud tops, etc. They're especially valuable when the METAR and TAF tell different stories or when convective activity is nearby.

Available at aviationweather.gov/pireps.

✅ 7. SIGMETs and AIRMETs

These are inflight weather advisories issued by the Aviation Weather Center:

• SIGMET — significant meteorological conditions affecting all aircraft: severe turbulence, severe icing, volcanic ash, tropical cyclones. These are serious — do not fly into a SIGMET area without a very good reason and appropriate equipment/ratings.
• AIRMET Sierra (IFR) — IFR conditions over a large area (ceilings below 1,000 ft and/or visibility below 3 SM). Directly relevant to VFR pilots — this is a red flag for your route.
• AIRMET Tango (Turbulence) — moderate turbulence, sustained surface winds above 30 knots, or non-convective low-level wind shear.
• AIRMET Zulu (Icing) — moderate icing and freezing levels. Less relevant for summer VFR flights, but critical in fall and winter.

✅ 8. DATIS — Departure Airport

Pull the DATIS for your departure airport if it's a towered field. Note the information letter and altimeter setting so you're ready on your first call to ground or clearance delivery.

✅ 9. Big Picture — Radar and Satellite

Step back from the data points and look at the overall picture. Check current radar to see if any precipitation is moving toward your route. Look at visible satellite imagery (during daylight) to see cloud coverage across your route. If you see a solid deck of stratus or a line of convective cells heading your way, no number of favorable METARs can make that a good flight.

The Go/No-Go Decision

After reviewing all the above, ask yourself:

• Are current and forecast conditions at departure, en route, and destination at or above my personal minimums?
• Is my alternate airport clearly above minimums in case conditions deteriorate?
• If conditions are borderline, do I have a clear out — a place to land and wait if things go wrong?
• Am I making this decision based on the weather, or based on schedule pressure or the desire to complete the flight?

The last question is the most important. Get-there-itis is a factor in more accidents than bad weather alone. If the honest answer to any of the first three questions is "no" or "maybe," the answer to the flight is no — for now.

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