Not surprised you haven't heard about this...most CFIs don't know what it is.
And those who do, may even know how to spot it on a Skew-T but perhaps inappropriately usually use other cues to decide that the AIRMET is off the rails, and don't even bother pulling up the Skew-T.
For the person surprised they haven't seen a Skew-T...
One can spend hours and hours looking at turbulence forecasts and data, or just pull the seatbelt tighter and go, unless it's so bad there's actually some PIREPs in the system. Heh.
Severe LLWS is fairly rare overall, and moderate at an airport is "old hat" and just "stuff you had to fly and land in anyway" by the time you've achieved the Commerical rating.
Most pilots ears do perk up when they hear the guy or gal in front of them report a 20 knot airspeed change on final, though!
Sadly, most of what one learns about AIRMETs over a long period of time is that they're usually the Boy Who Cried Wolf. A bad thing when they're not, but unfortunately they're not all that useful most of the time. SIGMETs get everyone's attention. AIRMETs are mostly just a reminder to look at a few other things and decide if they look looney.
That's not said in my "CFI voice" reserved for teaching students of course. All students shall review AIRMETs and take them seriously.
They'll learn not to, all on their own, later on. Hahaha. Ouch. But true.
Plus a low time student or even private rated pilot does need to watch out for the low level stuff, but then there's going to be the day when the ENTIRE forecast is a bust and they're sweating it out rocking down final in a blow.
That's GOING to happen to them eventually, so I'd best teach them how to land in it and taxi the airplane to somewhere to tie it down without flipping it over first, and we can spend some time on the AIRMET and Skew-T later. In the limited time we've got before they head for a checkride, it's not going to get much more than lip service.
This is why pilots have to be determined to keep learning after ratings are earned. Ratings are just the minimum standard. Not the end.
Hopefully I can show them a LITTLE BIT of Skew-T stuff they might peek at to figure it all out, but there's a pretty good chance my Skew-T reading is about the fourth grade level. LOL. I can see icing stuff way better than wind stuff on them, so far. Just being honest here.
Always happy to learn more, but we'd better make sure they can land or divert safely anyway., because they'll get caught out on a bad day eventually no matter how many weather charts they know how to read.
Not a single CFI had ever shown me a Skew-T in over a decade of flying -- and I first read about them online -- then younger CFIs have had discussions about them with me more recently, including some real world work looking at them with
@jesse during Instrument rating training and beyond -- so I definitely won't be "that guy" who never mentions them to students... but they're not taught much by older CFIs.
They still taught weather awareness just fine, but not from that tool. Sometimes the discussion was limited to, "You're going to get your butt kicked over a 1000 square mile area today, I promise." And all they did was look out the window of the flight school office.
After a while you see it and realize you caught a number of hints in various weather sources, including your eyeballs, that the student doesn't see yet. And you need to teach them how to see it. The Skew-T is one of many tools at your disposal.
That's probably the most important thing to know: Your instructor didn't teach you EVERYTHING about flying or about weather or even about ALL of the best FBOs that have lunch counters. You'll still have to go find some of it on your own!
They got you safe and squared away enough to pass the checkride and hopefully a bit more. Everyone has more learning to do after that.
