=pod

=head1 NAME

metar - A METAR downloader/decoder

=head1 SYNOPSIS

B<metar> [-dvh] stations

=head1 DESCRIPTION

METAR reports are meteorological weather reports for aviation. B<metar> is a
small program which downloads weather reports for user-specified stations and
optionally decodes them into a human-readable format.

Aviation weather stations are commonly referred to by ICAO designator. The
ICAO is the International Civil Aviation Organization, a international
standardization body for civil organization. For example, KJFK is the ICAO
identifier for John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, New York, EHAM is the ICAO
identifier for Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, The Netherlands, etc.

=head1 OPTIONS

B<metar> requires at least one station identifier to run. A full list of ICAO
stations is available for download at
F<http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/nsd_bbsss.txt>.

B<metar> supports three additional options:

=over

=item B<-d> Decode the retrieved weather reports into a human-readable format.

=item B<-v> Be verbose while retrieving a report.

=item B<-h> Show a short help summary

=back

=cut

=head1 ENVIRONMENT

If the environment variable METARURL is set, B<metar> will attempt to download
the weather report from that location, rather than from the default (the NOAA
web site). The value of METARURL will be postfixed with the capitalized
station ID, followed by the .TXT extension. 

For example, if you have METAR reports in your home directory, setting
METARURL to $HOME and asking for the weather report of ehgr will result in the
file $HOME/EHGR.TXT to be read.

=head1 AUTHOR

Kees Leune <kees@leune.org>

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