---
id: metar
version: "2.0.1"
license: Copyright (c) 2004-2018, Tom Pollard All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# metar — Metar - a package to parse METAR-coded weather reports

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 150.4K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Metar is a Python library for decoding METAR and SPECI reports—standardized coded weather observations used in aviation. It follows the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) specification and US Federal Meteorological Handbook conventions, extracting structured data like temperature, dew point, wind speed and direction, visibility, pressure, and weather phenomena from raw text reports. The library parses main-body groups and most US remark groups (cumulative precipitation, min/max temperature, peak wind, sea-level pressure), and accepts many international format variants.

The package has no external dependencies and installs as a pure Python wheel, making it lightweight and straightforward to integrate. It's tested against Python 3.10–3.14 and maintained actively on GitHub. You can use it to download and decode current METAR data from NOAA sources, build aviation weather dashboards, or analyze historical weather patterns for flight planning and meteorological research.

Use it for:

- Download and decode current METAR reports for specific airports using NOAA data sources.
- Extract structured weather data (temperature, wind, visibility) from raw METAR text for aviation applications.
- Build weather monitoring or flight-planning tools that parse and display decoded meteorological observations.
- Analyze historical METAR data to study weather patterns and trends for research or operational purposes.
- Validate or test METAR parsing logic in aviation software or weather APIs.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Parses METAR and SPECI coded aviation weather reports into structured data, extracting temperature, wind, visibility, pressure, and other meteorological observations.

Yes. The package is actively maintained, has zero known vulnerabilities, installs with no dependencies, and solves a specific, well-defined problem (METAR parsing) that has few alternatives. It's suitable for aviation weather applications, research, and any project needing to decode standardized weather reports. The BSD license is permissive and poses no restrictions.

## Install

pip install metar
uv add metar
poetry add metar

## Installing metar

Before you install: Low friction: pure Python wheel with no runtime dependencies. Actively maintained as of 2026-07-20 with recent release activity.

License in practice: BSD License (permissive): you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in commercial and private projects, provided you retain the copyright notice and disclaimer.

Quickstart:

from metar.Metar import Metar
obs = Metar('METAR KEWR 111851Z VRB03G19KT 2SM 22/22 A2987')
print(obs.temp)
print(obs.wind_speed)

Requires Python 3.10 or later.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package handles all regional METAR variants beyond WMO and US conventions mentioned in the description.
- Real-world accuracy and completeness of parsed remarks groups across different reporting stations.

## Package facts

- License: Copyright (c) 2004-2018, Tom Pollard All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 150.4K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

parse METAR weather reports, aviation weather data extraction, METAR decoder, weather observation parser, meteorological data parsing, ICAO weather codes, aviation weather analysis, aviation-weather, meteorology, data-parsing

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/metar) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/metar/)