Plain English Meaning

Robotic weather stations at airports. They take the local weather measurements and read them out over a radio frequency and a phone line, so a pilot can hear the current conditions before arriving or departing.

Full Definition

Two families of automated airport weather stations that continuously measure surface weather conditions and broadcast the observation by radio and telephone. Both report items such as wind direction and speed, visibility, sky condition, temperature, , and . AWOS is operated primarily by the , , or airport authorities and comes in several configurations (AWOS-A, AWOS-1, AWOS-2, , AWOS-3P/PT/T) that differ in which elements they sense and report. ASOS is the joint FAA// that serves as the ' surface weather observing network and generally provides the most complete automated report, including and information.