TAF Decoder
Turn a raw TAF airport weather forecast into plain English — the validity period, the base conditions, and every change group (FM, BECMG, TEMPO, PROB) spelled out. Paste one, or fetch the latest by airport code.
- Free, no sign-up
- Works worldwide
- Instant results
- Wind
- From 230° at 12 kt (≈22 km/h, 14 mph)
- Visibility
- 10 km or more
- Cloud
- Broken clouds (5–7 eighths) at 1,500 ft
- Cloud
- Broken clouds (5–7 eighths) at 1,000 ft
- Visibility
- 7 km (7,000 m)
- Weather
- Light rain
Decoded for convenience and learning — not for flight planning or operational use. For official briefings, use your aviation weather provider. Live data comes from NOAA’s Aviation Weather Center (aviationweather.gov).
How do you read a TAF?
Start with the airport code, issue time and the validity period (e.g. 2612/2718 = 26th 12:00 to 27th 18:00 UTC). Next come the base conditions — wind, visibility, weather, cloud — followed by change groups: FM for a sharp change at a time, BECMG for a gradual one, TEMPO for temporary fluctuations, and PROB30/40 for probabilities. Paste a TAF above, or fetch one by airport code, to read it all in plain English.
Methodology: TAF is a format standardised by the ICAO and WMO, so this tool decodes it deterministically — every line of output is parsed from the input string, not recalled from a database. It reads the header (station, issue time, validity), the base forecast, and each change group (FM, BECMG, TEMPO and PROB) with its own time window, plus forecast max/min temperatures (TX/TN). Wind, visibility, present weather and cloud are decoded the same way as in a METAR. Any group it doesn’t recognise is shown raw under “not decoded” rather than guessed, so the tool never invents a meaning. It’s for learning and convenience, not operational flight planning; live forecasts are fetched from NOAA’s Aviation Weather Center. How we test & calculate.
The forecast half of airport weather
If a METAR tells a pilot what the weather is doing now, a TAF tells them what it’s expected to do next. It’s the forecast an airport issues for roughly the next day, and like the METAR it’s packed into terse code — a validity period, a base picture of wind, visibility and cloud, then a series of timed changes. This decoder unpacks the whole thing into ordinary sentences, group by group, so you can see how the day at an airport is expected to unfold.
Reading the timeline
The power of a TAF is in its change groups. FM marks a clean break — “from this time, expect this instead”. BECMG is a gradual transition over a window. TEMPO warns of conditions that will come and go. And PROB30 or PROB40 attach a probability to what follows. Each is stamped with its own valid time, which this tool converts from the compact day-hour code into plain language so the sequence is easy to follow.
Paste one, or pull it live
Already have a TAF from a flight-planning app or an aviation site? Paste it in and it decodes as you type. If not, enter the airport’s four-letter ICAO code — Heathrow is EGLL, JFK is KJFK — and fetch the latest forecast straight from NOAA’s Aviation Weather Center. Either way you get the validity period, the base conditions, each change group, and any forecast high and low temperatures.
Honest about the format
TAFs occasionally include unusual or regional groups. Rather than guess, this decoder shows anything it doesn’t recognise exactly as written, so you always see the original beside the translation — which matters when the subject is weather and aircraft. It’s a convenience and teaching tool, not a substitute for an official briefing, so if you’re actually flying, brief from an approved provider.
Frequently Asked Questions
A TAF — Terminal Aerodrome Forecast — is the standard coded weather forecast for an airport, typically issued every six hours and valid for 24 to 30 hours. Where a METAR reports the weather right now, a TAF predicts it: the expected wind, visibility, weather and cloud over the forecast period, including how and when conditions are expected to change. It uses the same ICAO/WMO code format worldwide.