[teeray]

Unrelated to aviation, but I actually find METARs and TAFs are useful for hiking and skiing. I use the altimeter settings for my altimeter when hiking, and knowing the altitude of cloud layers is useful to know what the visibility will be like on the mountain (you have to do a bit of math with the airport elevation and the mountain’s elevation, but hey—it works!).

[krisoft]

I used METAR for running, or rather to say which days I'm allowed to not run.

I noticed that when the day was long, and I was feeling tired and lazy it was a lot easier to find some excuse why not to run that day. This excuse was often the weather. But on the other hand I didn't want to say no matter the weather I must run, because that is obviously excessive. So I made up a simple "algorithm" to decide if the weather fits the minimums, and if it did I must go and run. And I choose to base it on the measurements from the METAR of the local airport.

[alhirzel]

Cool idea, what's your algorithm's decision criteria?

[krisoft]

I think it was something super simple. Like temperature above X, no percipitation at the moment, no percipitation predicted during the next hour.

(I also remember I was willing to skip running in case of anything “exciting” being reported. Like tornados, or sandstorms or vulcanic ash. Not that any of that was a real possibility.)

[dpifke]

In the era before cell-phone internet, being able to call the automated weather reporting station at the nearest airport and have it read out conditions was hugely useful.

For folks who haven't seen what's in a METAR/TAF: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/weather/asos/ (By default, clicking a station gives you the abbreviated format; you can select the "decode" radio button and click "update" to translate it into English.)

[webdoodle]

I like your idea of visibility a lot, and would like to know more. Are you using a barometric altimeter? I use one hiking, but mainly for dead reckoning using an USGS elevation map. I usually just set my altimeter using those maps.