RACES members: Tarrant County Skywarn School Saturday January 20, 2001. It will be held in the Richland High School auditorium, located at 5201 Holiday Lane, North Richland Hills, TX. The entrance to the auditorium is located on the west side of the school, and class will begin around 8 A.M.
The guidelines for SKYWARN nets will always be posted here. Before checking in to a SKYWARN net, LISTEN to see what condition it is in. There are 3. GREEN , YELLOW, RED. Condition GREEN means there is nothing severe in Tarrant County at the moment. While "blue-sky reports are not really necessary this is when you can make them. What is a "blue-sky report"? That is when the net controller asks if there is anyone experiencing any severe weather in Tarrant County and someone replies with something on the order of: "XX5XXX I'm in Mapsco XXX and we don't have anything going on right now." This is not what net control was looking for. Listen to what net control is saying. Condition YELLOW means that there has been heavy rain, small hail reported. In other words, severe weather is occurring in Tarrant County. NO "BLUE-SKY REPORTS". Condition RED means that a wall cloud/tornado has been spotted, a tornado warning has been issued for Tarrant County, large hail, damaging winds, etc. In short, weather that has an immediate threat to life and property is occurring in Tarrant County. NO "BLUE-SKY REPORTS". Again, LISTEN to net control. When the 146.940 repeater is in RACES mode, it will have a courtesy tone of the letter 'R' in Morse code .-. Also, by helping to keep the net free of unnecessary traffic you will be helping the guys at the weather service office. Remember, they are monitoring several radios up there. If they hear a bunch of nonsense, they are more likely to "tune us out". (No pun intended) They are usually monitoring several counties at once so the less radio traffic they have to listen to, the better off we all are. A SKYWARN net is not the place to say "Hello how are you doing. I haven't talked to you in ages".
For those of you who are not familiar with SKYWARN:
The SKYWARN program is a network of volunteers trained by the National Weather Service (NWS) to report severe weather. The NWS's mission is to protect lives and property. During times of severe weather, Skywarn volunteers become the eyes and ears of the NWS and the local Emergency Management Office, helping to provide better warning services. Radar may be showing what is going on within the storm but it can't see what is actually happening on the ground. Reports are radioed in to the local National Weather Service office and are passed on to the meteorologists. SKYWARN participants are Amateur Radio operators who volunteer their time to go out and 'spot'. The Ft.Worth/Dallas area is fortunate to have not only a National Weather Service office, but a large, well-trained group of spotters. SKYWARN 'nets' are run by a 'net controller' who handles all radio traffic and is the liason between the spotters in the field and the hams manning the radios at the NWS. You must be a member of RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Services) before you can check in to a SKYWARN net. Some areas allow members of another RACES group to check in, i.e. Tarrant County will allow members of Dallas County RACES (or other counties) to check in to a SKYWARN net. Other areas don't allow this, i.e. Dallas County. Of course, if there is an immediate threat to life or property, then anyone may check in. Obviously you must have a valid Amateur Radio operators license of the appropriate class before you can even transmit!!
One question that will be debated until the end of time: Are chasers and spotters one in the same? Some say yes and some say no. Spotters tend to stay in their own areas, i.e., Tarrant County, while chasers may drive several hundred miles to get to where the action is. Not all chasers are hams. But both groups are interested in severe weather. If you are planning on becoming a SKYWARN member, you are strongly encouraged to learn as much about severe weather as you can. This will not only help you to make better reports, it could also help keep you out of danger! (see below)
Below, we have listed some links to various pages that contain a wealth of information for those interested in spotting/chasing. We strongly encourage you to read the discussions concerning chaser safety as they apply to spotters as well.
.
"Chase
Safety" by Chuck Doswell
"Some
Thoughts On Storm Chasing" by Chuck Doswell
"Chaser
Ethics" by Alan Moller
"Irresponsible
Media Storm Chase Practices" by Chuck Doswell and Roger Edwards
"The
Innocent Victim" by Jon Davies
The webmaster has received several comments from people asking why there are references to storm chasing on a SKYWARN page. The reason is that chasers and spotters have several things in common. The number one thing is they should both have a good understanding of severe storms and appreciate how rapidly a storm can change. True the above articles were written with a chaser in mind but there is still some excellent information for spotters. Spotters can be guilty of the same types of "behavior" that are mentioned in these articles. We encourage everyone who is interested in becoming a SKYWARN spotter to learn as much as they can about severe weather and to not be complacent. Severe storms are mean and they don't discriminate. They will, pardon the expression, 'kick your butt' in a heartbeat if you are not careful and if you don't respect them. . We must be prepared. And one of the ways to be prepared is to learn as much as you can about severe storms so that you will know what you are looking at which will help you make better reports which in turn benefits everybody.
A spotter's guide can be found here
If you are going to take shelter from an approaching
storm, make sure you go to The
Storm Cellar, owned by Sam Barricklow, K5KJ. Good weather
information, great links and some fantastic photos.
Club president, Russ Stringfield, KW5KW,
has a page with some good
SKYWARN/spotting/chaser/Amateur Radio info.
Bobby Eddins, N5OLO, also has a great page full of pics,
excellent links and a Current Conditions page that is chock full
of up to the minute weather data.
For a list of spotter frequencies in Texas and other places, click here . We make no guarantees as to the accuracy of this list.
Here in the Metroplex, the following frequencies are used for SKYWARN nets: (note that this was accurate at the time it was first posted, some frequencies/PL Tones may have changed)
146.940--Ft.Worth PL 110.9
146.880--Dallas
146.920--Denton PL 110.9
145.490--Cleburne (Johnson Co.) PL 88.5
145.410--Waxahachie (Ellis Co.)
147.040--Weatherford (Parker Co.) PL 110.9
146.900--Mineral Wells (Palo Pinto Co.) PL 110.9
147.180--Collin Co.
Please remember that you must be a member of RACES before you
can check into a SKYWARN net unless there is an immediate threat
to life or property (i.e, a tornado on the ground that hasn't
been reported yet).
We value your comments, criticism etc. Please e-mail
the webmaster.
Last updated on 23 Sep 00
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