Good source for en route weather in The Netherlands?

Try www.yr.no +click on English translation

This are the sources I would use for VFR enroute in NL:

Weather radar

Official Metar

Official TAF

Visibility and wind

A very nice way to quickly get an overview of the weather conditions is Orbifly MetMap for BeNeLux:

I don't really believe in "official" meteo sources. In the end they all copy it from each other. Met Office in the UK and the NOAA are probably the most common sources for weather and charts.

But for the average Dutch VFR pilot flying to Texel to get a burger or "Uitsmijter", the KNMI (Dutch Meteo Office) pages lenthamen quoted are indeed the main planning sources. I would like to add:

fronts and pressure charts of the netherlands

Or any other fronts and surface pressure charts of Europe (mainly distributed by the MetOffice or WAFC London). Also this

Dutch textual weather briefing

is handy, but to use it properly you need to know dutch or use a translator. They don't provide it in English anymore (as they used to do).

There is a very nice weather planning solution here, but for some reason you are required to have a Dutch AOPA membership to access it.

Aviation weather

The beauty of this site is that you can access current local weather for a lot of locations in the Netherlands (sort of like a METAR for EHLE for example) and a GLLFC like this:

link to image in case it doesn't work

To bad not everybody can freely access it.

(edit: I can't get the image to work... Or doesn't it work with PDF's?)

A good simple method, for traditional VFR flight below the cloudbase, is to get the tafs and metars for various airports enroute, and make sure both actual and forecast cloudbases are say 1000ft above the MSA, all along the route, and say minus 1hr and plus 1hr around the relevant times.

Same for the visibility, where the value will depend on how you propose to navigate. Say 10km+ for visual nav, 3km+ if using GPS, 1.5km+ (the lowest possible for VFR) if using GPS and experienced in what will be virtually instrument flight conditions.

Cloud top forecasts at such low levels are basically totally useless, and the cloudbases are in the tafs and metars. It's the best you will get, and the tafs are prepared by people who not only do it 24/7 for a living, but they also check the metar(s) before generating the tafs

Whereas the graphical data tends to come from say GFS which is a weather model that is great for longer range stuff, and quite good for high altitude (IFR) stuff, but not so good for a close-in picture.

Cloud top forecasts at such low levels are basically totally useless.

Most VFR pilots that I know do not fly VFR on Top. It's a strategy which is not covered in the PPL training and they are under the impression they need to have the ground in sight all the time.

What they learned during the PPL training is that VFR = Visual. And how can you navigate visually if you don't have the ground in sight? Also: How can you make a forced landing when flying over clouds?

For a general synopsis: (Use "FAX" to get access to various synoptic charts, and Diagramme for access to Meteograms) (also includes cloudbase predictions, which are very handy) Metform F414 and F415 cover the Netherlands as well.

Official sources: (login required - you can get a login through AOPA or KNVvL, but if you apply directly to the KNMI they will grudgingly give you an ID as well)

Graphical representation of METAR/TAF:

Rainfall radar: