This makes sense! Finally a possible explanation for the unbelievable weather in some places.
Not quite, you forgot about calm winds which are represented as ‘00000’! And some METARs aren’t in KTS!
I propose Asobo implement a check for METARs that does the following:
-
A substring ending with ‘Z’ can only be used as date/time.
-
That checks for the wind substring e.g. Ending with ‘KT’ OR 'MPS OR ‘KPH’ OR is equal to ‘00000’, both while following a ‘Z’.
-
If it can’t read the METAR and satisfy those requirements, throw the METAR away and don’t use it.
That way the reading of date/time and winds should be bulletproof.
Edit: Some METARs use MPS (Metres Per Second) or KPH (Kilometres Per Hour)!