METAR is a routine scheduled observation and is the primary observation code used in the United States to satisfy requirements for reporting surface meteorological data. METAR contains a report of wind, visibility, present weather, sky condition, temperature, dew point, and altimeter setting collectively referred to as the body of the report. In addition, information that elaborates on data in the body of the report may be appended to the METAR. This significant information can be found in the section referred to as Remarks.
NWS Telecommunication Operations Center (TOC) TGFTP Server
The Office of Observations (OBS) serves as the primary office responsible for the collection of space, atmosphere, water, and climate observational data owned or leveraged by NWS.
IWXXM-US was developed to support the encoding of US products (specifically, METAR, SPECI, TAF, and SIGMET) in XML. IWXXM-US builds directly off the work of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that created data models and schemas for Aviation XML (AvXML). One of the packages within AvXML is named IWXXM, and this package supports the four products mentioned above.