Beginning in July 1996, the United States will undergo the mostsignificant change for observing, reporting, and coding surfaceweather observations and terminal forecasts in the past fortyyears. Not since the early 1950s, when the present airways code(commonly known as Surface Aviation Observation or SA code), andTerminal Forecast (FT) codes were adopted, has there been sucha major code change for weather observations and forecasts.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/metar-taf-update