by Kevin Zimmermann
(WHBL) – The Sheboygan County Memorial Airport, as of today, becomes one of a select group given special attention by National Weather Service Forecasters. Our airport is joined today by the Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport near Janesville in becoming official TAF sites.
TAF stands for Terminal Aerodrome Forecast…a 24- to 30-hour surface forecast for a five nautical mile radius around the site. Of the many airports around the country, only a handful are designated as TAF sites.
Prior to today, the airport used a computer-generated product called a METAR, which is simply an hourly snapshot of current conditions. The TAFs, though, are a forecast, produced by humans, updated at least four times a day, every six hours, and they take into account local, small-scale, geographic effects.
The upgrade is the latest in a series of improvements at the airport. Ground was broken late last year for a new $5 million Customs and Terminal Building, slated for completion this month. That will allow international flights to fly directly to the airport, and runway improvements will allow access by craft as large as a DC-3.
