Plain English Meaning

It is a map view of current weather at airports. Instead of reading a line of coded weather text for each station, you see colored dots or symbols on the map that show at a glance whether conditions are good, marginal, or poor for flying.

Full Definition

A visual presentation of current surface weather observations on a moving map, where each reporting station is shown as a colored symbol or flag indicating flight category (VFR, MVFR, IFR, or LIFR) along with associated wind, visibility, ceiling, and other observed conditions. The underlying comes from but is rendered graphically rather than as coded text.