SKYWARN - WX4LWX
Most, if not all, of the Net Controls for the Northern Virginia Traffic Net are Net Controls for SKYWARN. The duties of the SKYWARN NCS are the following: volunteer 45 minutes-1 hour to monitor the radio and take any severe weather reports. You can log the reports taken on the downloadable log sheet or a similar one and email it to the Sterling NWS Office. The purpose of having remote NCS's for SKYWARN is because, although there is a radio at the Sterling NWS, the people there are usually too busy to continuously monitor the radio in severe weather situations.

Occaisionally during your tour of duty as NCS, you may hear a station using the call WX4LWX. This is a local ham that the Bluemont Repeater Group has dispatched to NWS to act as liaison between the radio and the NWS forecasters. Usually, this station monitors the activity quietly in the background, but occaisionally, WX4LWX will break-in and ask the station giving the report for some additional information or just to clarify the information already given. WX4LWX will then take this information to the forecasters so that they may make more accurate predictions.

SKYWARN is only activated when a severe weather watch is issued or a severe weather warning that affects two or more counties in Sterling's jurisdiction is issued. Sterling's jurisdiction is a box basically from Allegany county to Harford county and down to Saint Mary's county, all in Maryland. It then jumps the river and includes King George coutnty, Virginia, to Nelson county, Virginia. The line then continues back up to Allegany county, Maryland. This area includes the entire Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. It does not include Garrett, Cecil, or any counties in Maryland east of Chesapeake Bay, or any counties in Pennsylvainia. It looks something like this:


In addition to the main SKYWARN net, there are several subnets that NWS may choose to bring up or down as severe weather affects a particular area.

Log sheet - summer MS Excel format >1K

Log sheet - winter MS Excel format >1K

Summer Script Plain-text format 1.47K

Winter Script Plain-text format 1.46K

Closing Script Plain-text format 1.45K