ATIS Alerts Opens Its Flying Weather Index: 20 Years of Weather at 1,400 US Airports, Free to Download
Free rankings built from 646 million ASOS and AWOS observations show how often US airports are VFR or IFR, how windy they are and how far pilots can see, and every ranking can now be downloaded.
LONGWOOD, Fla., November 10, 2026 — ATIS Alerts (atisalerts.com) has opened the data behind its Flying Weather Index, a free set of rankings that shows how the weather really behaves at about 1,400 US airports. Every ranking can now be downloaded as a spreadsheet file and reused under a CC BY 4.0 license with credit.
The index draws on 646 million hourly observations from 2006 through 2025, recorded by the NOAA and National Weather Service ASOS and AWOS stations pilots read every day and archived by the Iowa Environmental Mesonet at Iowa State University. It ranks airports by how often they are VFR or IFR, by average wind and gusts, by visibility and ceilings, and by how well they suit flight training.
Some results: Needles, Calif., and Las Vegas Harry Reid International are VFR during 99.5 percent of daylight hours, the most of any airports in the study. Cold Bay, Alaska, is the windiest, with an average wind of 13.7 knots. The airports that are IFR most often sit on Alaska's Arctic coast, led by Point Thomson.
“Every pilot knows their home field's weather, but a new airport is a guess. If you're choosing where to train, or planning a trip in a season you've never flown, twenty years of real observations beats a hunch. Now flight schools, clubs and researchers can take the numbers and use them.”
The Flying Weather Index is a summary of past observations, not a forecast. It is at atisalerts.com/aviation-weather-rankings.
About ATIS Alerts
atisalerts.com is a free aviation-weather website and Telegram alert service, independently built and operated in Longwood, Florida. The site puts live METAR, TAF and D-ATIS for every US airport on one page, alongside runway-by-runway wind and configuration intelligence, FAA delay and TFR tracking, multi-year weather rankings, and free pilot tools. Its Telegram bot messages pilots the moment an ATIS broadcast changes or the weather drops below their personal minimums. ATIS Alerts is not affiliated with the FAA, and nothing on the site is approved for operational use: it is a planning and situational-awareness aid, and pilots must verify conditions with official FAA-approved sources before flight.
Media contact
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⚠️ Not for operational use. Always verify with official FAA-approved preflight weather sources before flight.