JohnBurke

At one time, in a former life, I was an atmospherics pilot, doing data flights for everything from upper dust samples to moisture to thunderstorms and thunderstorm mapping. I'm not a meteorologist, but I've worked with some very esteemed ones (and most of what they said went over my head); so don't claim to play one on TV, either.

In old times, weather balloons carried airborne sensors (aerosonde) aloft to gather data, and a great deal of weather forecasting used a little data and a lot of calculation to make a best guess. Data has been gathered for decades now, and very accurate maps that model weather predictions are the source for most of the weather you see today on the weather channel through aviation forecasts. This information is constantly worked over by the input of real time data from aircraft, ground station observations, satellite information, etc. It's combed through and crunched by programs, compared to historical, and viewed by meteorologists. From that we get weather reports that are used for everything...and what you get on your evening weather, too. Long story short, it's nearly all computer modeling and prediction.

Inflight weather and winds are already being reported by thousands of cockpits automatically, gathered, and put into existing models to refine and improve.

galaxy flyer

I doubt it’s all that complicated. ADC takes temp and pressure altitude integrates it IAS to TAS. Drift is calculated to make good a track. Integrate the track and groundspeed—winds. Play with HSI and E6B and can be done, not as precisely or sent to a ground station, but useable

GF