Left: Regional view of current ceiling conditions as shown by RAL's newly-operational Ceiling and Visibility Analysis product. Right: Magnified sub-regional view indicating possible terrain obscuration (orange) in southern New York and eastern Pennsylvania. Yellow areas warn of widespread ceilings less than 1000' above ground level.

RAL's Ceiling and Visibility Analysis (CVA) has passed FAA evaluation to qualify for operational use as a planning tool to enhance pilot situational awareness.  CVA presents current observations at ˜1600 METAR sites across the continental U.S. (CONUS), along with estimates of expected conditions between observing points based on careful spatial interpolation. To remain current in rapidly changing conditions, the product is updated every 5 minutes, and is rendered on a 5 km grid. A second–generation CVA product will implement more rigorous probabilistic representation of the uncertainty in C&V conditions between observing points.