SKYWARN Newsletter #221

---

Hello to all...

SKYWARN Strategy Meeting Minutes from Saturday October 16th, 2004...

Reminder: Southern New England Weather Conference Saturday November 6th, 2004....

Massachusetts and New Hampshire ARES SET Drills Coming Over the Next 2 Weeks...

NOAA Issues Winter Weather Outlook for 2004-2005....

ARRL Letter Article: Radio Amateurs Aid in Tornado Response in the Missouri Bootheel...

***Newsletter Issued: 10/25/04.

SKYWARN Strategy Meeting Minutes from Saturday October 16th, 2004...

The following people attended the SKYWARN Strategy Meeting at NWS Taunton:

N1FY-Carl Aveni NWS Taunton SKYWARN Operator

KB2SAE-George Bourassa Berkshire County Mass. SKYWARN Coordinator

KB2VLC-Diane Bourassa Berkshire County Mass. SKYWARN Spotter

KA1JJM-Ray Weber Western Massachusetts SKYWARN Coordinator

KA1RVR-Jay Carter New Hampshire State SKYWARN Coordinator

KB1KQW-Jim Palmer North Shore Mass. SKYWARN Asst. SKYWARN Coordinator

KA1NCF-Eric Horwitz North Shore Mass. SKYWARN Spotter

N1PJ-PJ Howe Worcester County Mass. Assistant SKYWARN Coordinator

KB1EKN-Mark Duff Metro Boston ARES District Emergency Coordinator

N1JMA-Martin Mendelson Rhode Island State SKYWARN Coordinator

W1ZSA-Roger Turner Norfolk County SKYWARN Coordinator/Walpole EMA Dir.

KC8CEV-Ron Trainor NWS Taunton SKYWARN Operator/Cape Cod ARES

KD4CLJ-David Bodman NWS Taunton SKYWARN Operator/Sturdy Memorial ARES

K1CJS-Chris Smith Fall River ARES/RACES/SKYWARN Emergency Coordinator

N1VUX-William Ricker Waltham-Boston SKYWARN Coordinator/Net Manager

KD1CY-Rob Macedo ARES SKYWARN Coordinator for NWS Taunton

Bill Babcock NWS Taunton SKYWARN Program Leader & Senior Forecaster

KB1GHX-Glenn Field NWS Taunton Warning Coordination Meteorologist

The first item was a Year-in-Review presentation for SKYWARN. Highlights of the

year were discussed including the fact that there were 186 severe weather

reports in 2004 vs. 68 severe weather reports for 2003 and that 82.3% of the

reporting was via Amateur Radio. Also, highlighted was the support of the

VoIP hurricane nets during the course of the year and how new paging

software that allows paging through the Internet and the Internet access

at NWS Taunton has opened up additional reporting methods through Instant

Messaging programs. In addition, goals for 2005 were also reviewed. Glenn

Field, KB1GHX, thanked all that were present for their tremendous support

of the NWS Taunton SKYWARN program this year and in past years.

The next item was Ray Weber gave approximately a 30-minute overview of the

radar server that he has been working with NWS Headquarters and NWS Taunton.

Ray gave an overview of the available algorithms and capability and explained

the limited access that is available to certain coordinators based on server

limitations. The presentation was well received by the coordinators.

The next item discussed was SKYWARN Training for the 2005 season. Bill Babcock

gave an overview on training from the 2004 SKYWARN Training Season. With 15

training sessions over the region, there were 570 people trained including

10 people from outside the NWS Taunton County Warning Area. For 2005, the

NWS Taunton Office will only be able to do 10 SKYWARN Training sessions due

to other commitments that the office will have to uphold during the year.

Since this is the case, SKYWARN “Refresher” Training seminars will be offered

and its hoped to do 5-6 sessions across portions of Southern New England to

backfill the void left by only doing 10 SKYWARN Training sessions by the

NWS office. The “refresher” class will not allow new, non-trained spotters

to get a Spotter ID at that time but it will allow people who already have

a Spotter ID to have a renewed Spotter ID going forward. NWS Taunton is

working on getting a SKYWARN Refresher Training class put together on the

web as a lower priority and will soon invoke a rule on when spotters will

need to be refreshed. This maybe started that refresher training maybe

done every 8 years and gradually is lowered to 5 years as refresher

training becomes available on the web. During the course of this

discussion, the SKYWARN Spotter database entry was discussed. Data entry

will be done over the course of the next 2 months and will be completed

by the end of December. Once that is completed, the list of Spotters will

be made available to the specific SKYWARN Coordinators for their area

in case they need to be contacted for information during severe weather events.

Areas that are in need of SKYWARN Training were also discussed. Glenn Field went

through a list of areas where NWS needs more wind verification for high wind events.

These areas included Western Franklin County, Hampshire County, Extreme Eastern

and Extreme Western Hampden County, Northwest Middlesex County

(Panhandle area), and Plymouth County Massachusetts, Extreme East and

Extreme Western Hartford and Tolland Counties in CT, Providence and

Western Kent Counties of RI and Western Hillsborough County in New

Hampshire. Some of these areas maybe targeted with SKYWARN training.

In addition, the junior spotter policy was discussed. Basically, anyone

16 or older will receive a spotter ID card with a special exception to

people 16 or younger who are Boy Scouts or Amateur Radio Operators.

Also, the forecaster may grant special exceptions to young people who the

forecaster feels grasped the material. Those that don’t meet criteria will

get a special “junior” spotter ID card so that they receive something for

attending the class. Further details on dates for the classes and when

“refresher” classes will be done will follow over the coming weeks. Bill

Babcock will also work on a ”Train-the-Trainer” session for those Amateur

Coordinators willing to give the session. A pilot training session may also

be done with South Shore SKYWARN as a refresher session so that trainers

could get comfortable with giving the class and Bill Babcock would

observe the session.

The next item discussed was liaison paths to various areas. During this

discussion it was noted by Roger Turner-W1ZSA that the Walpole Repeater

would soon require a 123.0 Hz PL tone. In addition, the 147.000-Dartmouth

Repeater run by SEMARA (the Southeast Massachusetts Amateur Radio

Association) and the 145.490-Fairhaven Repeater are both now running

67.0 Hz PL tones. After that information was passed along, we discussed

some areas where liaison paths may need some improvement. We discussed

some liaison path improvements to the state of New Hampshire.

Jay Carter-KA1RVR mentioned that the 443.350-Pack Monadnock Repeater

remains off the air. It was mentioned that Bernie-N1IMO may do some work

on the 449.225 Repeater that is on Pack Monadnock to make it useable

from NWS Taunton. In addition, it was mentioned that Echolink

capability to the NEW-ENG Echolink node of the New England Network

could also be utilized. We also discussed the liaison path to the

Mount Tom Repeater that has an IRLP node. The node is working but is

not listed in the IRLP database and that issue is under investigation.

Ray Weber mentioned that the coordinators in his area have the

information to bring the link up direct to a node in Eastern

Massachusetts or bring the node up on to the New England Network.

We also discussed better coverage into the Northwest Worcester

County area and how to work liaisons into that area either via

VoIP or repeaters in the area. A map of the liaison paths will be

made based on updates to the text document that was created at the

March 2004 SKYWARN Strategy Meeting. Bill Ricker-N1VUX offered to

complete doing a map of the liaison paths.

The next item that was discussed concerned SKYWARN Recognition Day. A

call for operators to assist with SKYWARN Recognition Day was made to

the coordinators in the room in case anyone is interested. Offering

QSL Cards were then discussed and a card may be offered if a card

can be made up and printed in time for December. In addition, there

are QSL Management programs that could also help in the processing of

QSL cards. Further details will follow, as they are known.

The next item discussed was the NWS Taunton Ham Station Operations

and utilization of the new HF radio donated by Carl Aveni-N1FY. The

NWS office has a severe problem with “zinc whiskers” which have caused

severe issues with electronics in a building. A new floor maybe needed

to resolve the problem, which could result in the NWS office being

shut down for 2 weeks while the work is completed. Until that time,

new equipment cannot be installed. This is still pending approval with NWS HQ.

The next item discussed was the lessons learned from the hurricane

activations. As discussed during the 2004 year-in-review presentation,

the biggest lessons learned were that there will be a need to have a

separate PC where Hams at the NWS office can send reports to WX4NHC during

activations for a hurricane. In addition, more wind measuring equipment

is required including portable and home mounted wind instrumentation

to get more accurate wind data for the National Hurricane Center and

for National Weather Taunton during a hurricane or wind event. An

article will be completed concerning affordable wind

instrumentation/weather station equipment along with some of the

more expensive models that are available.

The next item discussed was Email and IM usage for NWS reporting. Thus

far, AOL Instant Messenger has proved to be the most valuable way to

get data to and from NWS during operations. Utilizing the screen name

WX1BOX during operations when the NWS Taunton station is active and

utilizing the screen name W1AEC when operations may be active from

the SEMARA Club have proved valuable in getting reports. In addition,

the email addresses, skywarnwn9509@peoplepc.com and wx1box@n1xtb.ampr.org

have also helped but to a lesser degree then the AOL Instant Messenger.

Dave Bodman-KD4CLJ mentioned the use of either GAIM products or Trillian,

which would allow for utilization of all IM types including AOL IM, Yahoo

and MSN IM using one program. This will be tested and potentially

utilized during the 2005 Severe Weather season.

During this discussion, Roger Jeanfaivre-K1PAI from Connecticut SKYWARN had

a couple of items that he emailed that were discussed by the coordinators

that were present. The first item was more publicity for the Amateur Radio

Repeaters including on the NWS web site and via NOAA Weather Radio. NOAA

Weather Radio was not considered to be the greatest of ideas by NWS Taunton

officials but the web page was considered an excellent idea. A map will be

made of the repeaters that are active in SKYWARN followed by a listing. Also,

another idea was to make a “threefold” pamphlet that could be distributed at

SKYWARN Training sessions in a fold-over type pamphlet that could easily be

carried if an Amateur was mobile that would contain the following:

-SKYWARN Amateur Radio Frequencies from around the region.

-How to become a spotter.

-How you must have a FCC license to be an Amateur Operator and how to obtain that license.

-Reporting Criteria for SKYWARN (if enough room in the pamphlet).

The other item discussed that Roger-K1PAI had emailed in was a web interface

to forward reports, particularly rain and snowfall totals. Right now due to

firewall and web security issues, this will not be able to be completed until

2006 at the earliest. Eastern Region, as well as Jim Notchey, the local NWS

Taunton IT person have some prototypes in the works but the security issues

for the web-site are what’s causing major delays.

The next item discussed was the Storm Ready program. Glenn Field, KB1GHX,

Warning Coordination Meteorologist for NWS Taunton, mentioned that he has

many cities and towns inquiring about the program and that a concerted effort

will be made to contact communities which have been neglected due to a myriad

of event that NWS Taunton has had to provide support for over the past few

months. Towns and cities highest on the list that are being worked include

Smithfield, RI and Manchester, CT. Other cities and towns on the list include

Worcester, Mass., Boston, Mass., Hull, MA, Ipswich, Mass., Portsmouth RI,

Carver, MA, Wilbraham, MA, Agawam, MA, Pelham, MA and Merrimack, NH. There

also were other cities and towns that may not be listed here. The plan is

to aggressively pursue work with the cities and towns starting in

mid-November as the goal is to add 5 more cities and towns in the NWS

Taunton County Warning Area to the Storm Ready program.

Other NWS Topics that were discussed included the fact the P3 Hurricane

Hunter Plane will not be coming to Southern New England for 2005. In addition,

some changes in the Winter policy are that any warning that are SAME’d must now

be toned out and anything that is toned out must be SAME’d per Eastern Region.

There is also a blackout period from 11 PM-7 AM for winter storm products to be

toned out on weekdays. NWS Taunton also indicated that they would need to

know if the SAME Alert is going out immediately for the appropriate winter

products. NWS has stated that there have been some media outlets that have

complained that since some changes were made at NWS, they are not receiving

any of the Winter or Coastal Flood products on their SAME system so that it

can be toned out so NWS would like to verify if they are going out over the

NOAA Weather Radio system to see where the issue may be occurring. Those that

receive SAME Alerts from Winter products should email Rob-KD1CY for forwarding

on to NWS Taunton. The last topic reviewed was something Glenn Field showed

everyone on the graphical forecast products on the web site and some enhancements

to these products that will be implemented in the coming weeks.

The next SKYWARN Strategy Meeting has been scheduled for Saturday February

26th, 2004 at 10 AM at NWS Taunton. A back-up or snow date has been

scheduled for Saturday March 5th, 2004 at 10 AM at NWS Taunton. Thanks to

all coordinators, particularly those who traveled for several hours for coming

to these meetings. NWS Taunton appreciates everyone efforts!

Reminder: Southern New England Weather Conference Saturday November 6th, 2004...

The Southern New England Weather Conference will be Saturday November 6th, 2004

at the Clay Center for Science and Technology at the Dexter/Southfield School,

20 Newton Street in Brookline, Mass. The cost of the tickets which includes

a continental breakfast, lunch, and hors d'oeurves is 75 dollars for

adults and 65 dollars for students.

This is the fifth annual conference that is put on with mutual cooperation

from NWS Taunton, Mass., the Blue Hill Observatory, the Greater Boston

Chapter of the American Meteorological Society and the NWS Taunton chapter

of the National Weather Association. For an agenda and information on how

to register, please see the following link:

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/announcement/2004SNEWxConf.html

The conference provides a way to learn more about the various topics of

weather that are covered.

Massachusetts and New Hampshire ARES SET Drills Coming Over the Next 2 Weeks...

The states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire will be holding their ARES SET

drills over the course of the next couple of weekends. Eastern Massachusetts

will be doing a limited SET Drill that adds on to a more extensive drill that

Cape Cod ARES is doing on Saturday October 30th, 2004 from 10 AM-Noon. Details

on the drill and contacts for the drill can be seen at the following link:

http://ares.ema.arrl.org/

New Hampshire ARES will also be doing a drill on Saturday October 30th, 2004

from 9 AM-1 PM. For information on their drill, please see the following link:

http://www.ares.nhradio.org/

At their web-site, New Hampshire ARES Section officials are requesting that Hams

in New Hampshire contact their local ARES Emergency Coordinator for details.

Western Massachusetts ARES will also be doing their SET drill on Saturday November

6th, 2004. For further details for Hams living in Western Massachusetts, please

contact Dennis Zonia-K1VSG at Zoniavsg@aol.com

NWS Taunton maybe active for a period of time for the Eastern Massachusetts and

New Hampshire ARES SET drills pending facility availability. The drills will

serve as another form of practice in case a major incident occurs requiring

Amateur Operators to provide backup communications or be prepared for winter

time SKYWARN Activations.

NOAA Issues Winter Weather Outlook for 2004-2005....

NOAA has issued its Winter Weather Outlook form 2004-2005. NOAA updated its

U.S. Winter Outlook for December 2004 through February 2005, which

continues to call for warmer-than-normal conditions in the West and

Alaska, and cooler-than-normal conditions in the South and in sections of

the mid-Atlantic coast states. For precipitation, NOAA's Outlook calls

for drier-than-average conditions in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley

and wetter-than-average conditions over parts of the South. In Hawaii,

temperatures are expected to be above average with precipitation below

average. Elsewhere, there are equal chances of above, below and

normal temperatures.

The link to the entire news story can be seen below:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2004/s2332.htm

Special thanks to Roger Perry-N1MJN, who passed this article along via the

Fairhaven Repeater Weather Net Email list.

ARRL Letter Article: Radio Amateurs Aid in Tornado Response in the Missouri Bootheel...

The following is an ARRL Letter Article on Radio Amateurs aiding in Tornado

Response in the Missouri Bootheel:

* Radio amateurs aid in tornado response: After severe weather rumbled

through the Missouri Bootheel October 18, radio amateurs from three states

rushed to help however they could. More than 60 possible tornadoes were

reported to the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Memphis,

Tennessee. Pemiscot County Emergency Coordinator Loyd Avis, KC0MWU,

reports three people died near the small community of Cooter, when a

tornado destroyed their homes. Dunklin County also suffered storm damage,

while hail and high winds were reported elsewhere. A tornado touched down

in extreme southeastern Missouri then jumped the Mississippi River into

Dyer County, Tennessee, causing considerable damage there. Throughout the

storm period, Missouri District Emergency Coordinator Larry Anthony,

WB0VAM, supplied information on hail, damage to homes and power outages to

public service operators in the Missouri Bootheel and in northeastern

Arkansas as well as to local broadcasters.

Respectfully Submitted,

Robert Macedo (KD1CY)

ARES SKYWARN Coordinator

Southeast Massachusetts ARES District Emergency Coordinator

SEMARA ARES Emergency Coordinator

Pager #: (508) 354-3142

Home Phone #: (508) 994-1875 (After 6 PM)

Home/Data #: (508) 997-4503 (After 6 PM)

Work Phone #: 1-800-445-2588 Ext.: 72929 (8 AM-5 PM)

Email Address: rmacedo@rcn.com

http://users.rcn.com/rmacedo

Back to the SKYWARN Newsletter Archive