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Any free source of UK MSLP charts in the proper sequence?

I suspect the free colour ones are just a variant on this
(I googled “Met Office mslp with fronts” – that link may not work for long as it seems to have a timestamp).

In my experience the issue is not with paying the Met Office subscription, it is with automating the downloads.
Even with a paid subscription and valid credentials you still have to handle sessionids in cookies before you can get to the gifs.

White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

Yes – I think those are the ones. Except the 0600 and 1800 are missing.

Actually that is a free site.

Maybe the 0600 and 1800 appear only on a paid site. Under GA they have a free-registered and a paid facility.

The free registered one still doesn’t have the 0600 and 1800 charts.

The paid one is £57/year and no way am I going to give them that just to see if they have those charts there. Avbrief is £40/year and they have them. But it is a login site which is hard to use on say a phone.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The link I posted is indeed free.
A better way into it is at: Link then click on the Surface pressure charts icon.
You may be able to automate the download (e.g. with “curl”).

I have paid the £57, and I just checked what you get for that. It is getting late, and I may have missed a trick, but so far as I can see, the paid-for charts are essentially the same as the free ones, except for T+84 which lives only behind the paywall. Both paid-for and free charts are 12-hourly then 24-hourly.

White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

I admit that I pay for mine. With the fronts, in colour, as part of my topmeteo subscription. Up to date, except sometimes the last one was generated yesterday…… all seem to be there whenever I look, marked up as coming from UKMO. I have given up trying to understand met office pricing. :(

Ps topmeteo will let you have a few items free, including the synoptic charts

Edited to add that the met office seem to put the synoptics on the public side, not the aviation side. If you look at topmeteo for today all four charts are there.

Last Edited by Piper.Classique at 29 Apr 15:17
It's supposed to be fun.
LFDW

Do you see the 0600 1200 1800 charts for the following day?

Avbrief presents these in the evening of the day before.

I don’t mind paying a bit for this stuff but it just seems to be slightly weird that it is all free, yet somehow and probably by accident rather than any grand plan, the 0600 and 1800 are randomly missing.

Last Edited by Peter at 29 Apr 15:28
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Strange…. Midnight 06.00 and 12.00. No 18.00, whether logged in or not.

It's supposed to be fun.
LFDW

Beyond strange…

Following Piper.Classique’s comment I just made a free registration at topmeteo and I can see 4 mslp charts for 29.04.14,
The first three, valid for 0000, 0600 and 1200 were generated one hour after the valid time.
The valid 1800 chart was generated at 2300 on the 28th, and so seems to be the only forecast.
Assuming the timestamps are correct the last one is the first time I have seen an 1800 validity..
Of course this is the first time I have looked, and this may be a snapshot in a daily or six-hourly cycle.

Despite having a Met Office paid subscription I have only ever seen 0000 and 1200 validities.
I had already noticed that most of the met office paid stuff is free on their own site, but my last renewal came up shortly before a flight test, and I wasn’t looking for any surprises.

The most recent quirk that I noticed is the historic rainfall radar: every 15 mins for paid subscriptions, instead of every 30 mins for the free registration,
Except it is free to the general public on the met office website with a 15 minute period!

Perhaps “aviation” weather is more expensive than the identical non-aviation kind?

=====
edited to add:
I just discovered the the day-of-the-week buttons on topmeteo, and now I see exactly what Piper.Classique said.
I still find it ironic that the met office makes 6H validities available, except on its own GA site…

Last Edited by DavidS at 29 Apr 17:57
White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

You can get radar at 15 min intervals from meteox.com.

You can get sferics at 1 minute intervals from Blitzortung.

You can get IR (from EUMETSAT) at 15 min intervals from SAT24 (or at 1hr intervals from the UKMO).

You can get Tafs and Metars from ADDS (99% of free websites get it from here) or from Eurocontrol.

The 0600 and 1800 MSLPs remain elusive For example right now I can’t see them anywhere – except Avbrief…


Oddly enough both say “T+24” so perhaps one of them is considered to be slightly bogus because it was prepared too long ago?

Last Edited by Peter at 30 Apr 06:24
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

As an update on this old thread, this site does seem to carry them all (on a quick test today) but you have to select the correct time for the correct day so e.g. for tomorrow you will have the 06 12 18 options, for a bit further out you have only the 00 and 12 options, and for the last 2 or so you have only the 12 option.

I can think of 2 or 3 ways of doing the required “linear list of MSLP charts” presentation using PHP and in fact I have got someone to do it for me now, but obviously the result could never be made public because the site will soon spot the traffic and will block it.

In the meantime, the original “MWIS” site is back up again but with a lot of “trash” around the periphery, and some charts are missing, including the one furthest out.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I think this is due to the fact that the forecast charts are done at various times in the day, so a T+24 might have been done before a T+12. Somewhere on the Met Office site there is an explanation of when charts are issued.

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)
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