The
main purpose of the SKYWARN
Net is for the gathering of severe weather
information to be forwarded to the National
Weather Service in Charleston, West Virginia or in
Blacksburg, Virginia. The SKYWARN
net is a regular Net with a Net Control Station
(NCS). The NCS has a script which it follows. A
copy of the Raleigh County SKYWARN Net script can
be found here!
The Raleigh County SKYWARN Net, is ran by the Black Diamond Amateur Radio Club (BDARC). It is a simple Net with some very simple rules. First, anyone may pass weather information to the Raleigh County SKYWARN Net at any time. While it is better to have, at least the basic SKYWARN training, it is not required to make weather observations and report to the SKYWARN NCS. In fact, I would encourage everyone to check into a SKYWARN Net as the more reports we can send to the forecasters, in Charleston or Blacksburg, the easier it is for them to develop a picture of what is happening here on the ground in Raleigh County as well the surrounding areas. Remember, although they have Doppler radar and satellites, but NOTHING takes the place of human observation! And what we report helps them to tell others what to expect as well for them to decide to whether or not to send out more alerts and/or warnings. Those reports can, also, be used to directly alert the local EOCs of what's happening in real time.
Of course, any other Emergency traffic will take precedence in the SKYWARN Net. If you have a hazardous situation that you need to be reported to the authorities, please contact the Raleigh County SKYWARN Net control and have them to relay the information immediately.
When Raleigh County SKYWARN Net is not taking traffic, any Amateur may use the repeater. Please, however, leave breaks in between your transmissions so that someone may contact the Net Control if necessary. Also, the Net Control will, at 15 minute intervals, read from a prepared script giving the Net information and any severe weather bulletins that are active. If you spot severe weather, and do not hear a SKYWARN net on the repeater, please give a call to the SKYWARN NCS. There is usually a NCS 'listening' in the background even though the Net has not been officially activated. Many times the Net is in a 'standby' mode because the activity has not reached our area and we are not ready to bring the full Net online. Also, if you are outside the county, please feel free to pass SKYWARN information via our Net. While we focus primarily on Raleigh County, we will gladly take information from any of the surrounding areas whether it is for Charleston NWS or Blacksburg NWS.
The Raleigh County SKYWARN Net, is ran by the Black Diamond Amateur Radio Club (BDARC). It is a simple Net with some very simple rules. First, anyone may pass weather information to the Raleigh County SKYWARN Net at any time. While it is better to have, at least the basic SKYWARN training, it is not required to make weather observations and report to the SKYWARN NCS. In fact, I would encourage everyone to check into a SKYWARN Net as the more reports we can send to the forecasters, in Charleston or Blacksburg, the easier it is for them to develop a picture of what is happening here on the ground in Raleigh County as well the surrounding areas. Remember, although they have Doppler radar and satellites, but NOTHING takes the place of human observation! And what we report helps them to tell others what to expect as well for them to decide to whether or not to send out more alerts and/or warnings. Those reports can, also, be used to directly alert the local EOCs of what's happening in real time.
Of course, any other Emergency traffic will take precedence in the SKYWARN Net. If you have a hazardous situation that you need to be reported to the authorities, please contact the Raleigh County SKYWARN Net control and have them to relay the information immediately.
When Raleigh County SKYWARN Net is not taking traffic, any Amateur may use the repeater. Please, however, leave breaks in between your transmissions so that someone may contact the Net Control if necessary. Also, the Net Control will, at 15 minute intervals, read from a prepared script giving the Net information and any severe weather bulletins that are active. If you spot severe weather, and do not hear a SKYWARN net on the repeater, please give a call to the SKYWARN NCS. There is usually a NCS 'listening' in the background even though the Net has not been officially activated. Many times the Net is in a 'standby' mode because the activity has not reached our area and we are not ready to bring the full Net online. Also, if you are outside the county, please feel free to pass SKYWARN information via our Net. While we focus primarily on Raleigh County, we will gladly take information from any of the surrounding areas whether it is for Charleston NWS or Blacksburg NWS.
Big
changes have been made in NOAA Weather Radio and
more are on the way. The Emergency Alert System
(EAS) replaced the Civil Defence's Emergency
Broadcast System as the source of emergency
information including weather watches and
warnings. Every NOAA Radio transmitter station now
attaches special digital codes to all severe storm
warnings. The digital codes indicate the
community, county, and/or metro area; the
type of warning and the time. Up to two minutes of
audio is also transmitted. Digital codes mean
information can be extracted untouched by human
hands by commercial EAS stations and directly
relayed to users. The codes also mean stations can
program only the counties in the listening area
and only the specific warnings they wish to
rebroadcast. For stations that run unattended at
night, the codes permit equipment to break into
programming, broadcasting the audio warning
message and return to automatic operation. These
digital codes are called FIPS Codes.
So, what does FIPS mean? It is an acronym for Federal Information Processing System.
These FIPS codes are a standardized set of numeric or alphabetic codes issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to ensure uniform identification of geographic entities through all federal government agencies. The entities covered include: states and statistically equivalent entities, counties and statistically equivalent entities, named populated and related location entities (such as, places and county subdivisions), and American Indian and Alaska Native areas.
Here are the Raleigh County and surrounding areas FIPS Codes:
So, what does FIPS mean? It is an acronym for Federal Information Processing System.
These FIPS codes are a standardized set of numeric or alphabetic codes issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to ensure uniform identification of geographic entities through all federal government agencies. The entities covered include: states and statistically equivalent entities, counties and statistically equivalent entities, named populated and related location entities (such as, places and county subdivisions), and American Indian and Alaska Native areas.
Here are the Raleigh County and surrounding areas FIPS Codes:
| County /
Town |
FIPS Code |
| Raleigh County |
54081 |
| City of Beckley |
05332 |
| Town of Lester |
46468 |
| Town of Mabscott | 49492 |
| Town of Rhodelle |
67996 |
| Town of Sophia |
75172 |
|
|
|
| Fatette County | 54019 |
| Town of Fayetteville |
27028 |
| Town of Mount Hope |
56404 |
|
|
|
| Boone County | 54005 |
| Town of Whitesville |
86836 |
|
|
|
| Wyoming County | 54109 |
| Town of Mullens |
57148 |
|
|
|
| Mercer County | 54055 |
| Athens |
03292 |
| City of Princeton |
65692 |
|
|
|
| Summers County | 54089 |
| Town of Hinton |
37636 |
|
|
|
| West
Virginia Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas (CBSAs) |
|
| Micropolitan Statistical Area | FIPS Code |
| City of Beckley |
13220 |
| Cities of Bluefield, West Virginia / Virginia |
14140 |
| City of Oak Hill | 36060 |
So,
you see, those codes are for the different communities, counties and metro areas.
If you have one of these receivers you can set it
to lock out all bulletins, for any community,
county or metro area, other than yours by punching
in the code for your area. I don't have them, but
there are other codes for the type of warning too.
You now hear these data bursts on commercial radio
and TV stations. NWS radio will still broadcast
the older alert tone too because there are many of
those older receivers still out there. Some
repeaters has a weather receiver attached to it's
controller. When an alert is received for the area
served by that particular repeater, the weather
receiver takes control of the repeater and
transmits the weather message automatically, even
if a QSO is in progress. After the message was
transmitted, the weather receiver returns control
of the repeater back to the repeater controller
and resumes regular repeater operations.
