National Weather Service weather thresholds (e.g. conditions change from visual meteorological conditions to instrument meteorological conditions). The basic weather elements observed are: sky condition, visibility, present weather, obstructions to vision, pressure, temperature, dew point, wind direction and speed, precipitation accumulation, and selected significant remarks. The coded observations are issued as METARs and look similar to this: Getting more information on the atmosphere, more frequently, and from more locations is the key to improving forecasts and warnings. Due to the large installation and operating costs associated with ASOS, the stations are widely spaced. Therefore, the Cooperative Observer Program (COOP), a network of approximately 11,000
NOAA Weather Radio broadcast routine segment if no report is available from the main reporting station, in which case the substituted station's observations will not be repeated at the end of the segment. In some locales, in the event any weather reporting station (whether the main station or a distant site) whose condition reports are regularly included in the segment had absent data, or no data available, the following message would be played in its place:In some areas, a major city featured within the regional observations would always provide weather conditions; if a condition report is unavailable, the message "the weather conditions were not available"