The mosaic NEXRAD weather radar images that many general aviation pilots get in their cockpits may be 15 to 20 minutes old, even when the image’s timestamp shows it’s only a few minutes old. That’s the takeaway message in a recent National Transportation Safety Board alert based on several recent accidents. The timestamp shown on the image is when the data processing company transmitted that image, the NTSB says. But it can take many more minutes before that to collect the radar imagery from… (www.ntsb.gov) More...
Since in-aircraft nexrad was introduced about 10 years ago the processing and transmission times have been significantly shortened. If your image is an hour old, there is clearly an equipment problem somewhere along the line. Keep in mind, the various radar images must be composted, then sent to your service provider, then reprocessed and send via satellite to your device. A few minutes consumed by each step all add up to a typical latency of 5-15 minutes. This has not been kept a secret and it is typically described in the device owners manual.
http://www.wright-weather.com/index.php It's as close to the real thing as you can get and as a person who works outside I find their site invaluable. 10 minutes to 1 hour? seriously? are we still using stones and bear skins?
Daniel: Yes! for those who are lucky to have it, but many out there with hand held or panel XM . . . I am lucky to have digital doppler radar and XM. I have always known of a delay with XM. However, I did not know that the "time-stamped" upload time could be off as much as an hour.
