I occasionally get copied on some of the “weather happenings” from the east coast, courtesy of my friend, Steve Crow, KG4PEQ. Today, I was reading through my email and he had copied me on an email he sent out to the SKYWARN spotters who are involved with the Wakefield National Weather Service office in Virginia. In this email, Steve was complimenting the ham radio operators who serve the SKYWARN program on the great job that they did yesterday when severe weather rolled through the region. He will probably deny this, but he is single handedly responsible for reorganizing, and resurrecting the once dead SKYWARN program in Wakefield, after being designated the SKYWARN coordinator (this was LONG overdue if you ask me). A tremendous amount of coordination and hand holding, along with some first hand frustration I observed on his part, and then, like magic, the system was back up and running again. Not only are they offering Basic and Advanced spotter training more often now, but there is a mechanism for traning new net control operators as well.

Okay, so maybe this post is a little less about SKYWARN and you, and more about Steve saving the day, but I can fix that, because it’s my blog. So there.

When severe weather is in the forecast, the local National Weather Service office may request “Spotter Activation” (you may have heard that on your scanner, even if you are not a ham). The NWS needs first hand observers to add to the validity of their forecasting, because you can’t surmise everything from RADAR, and charts, etc. This is especially crucial when lives or property loss are at stake. Spotters are there to give accurate wind, hail, rain, etc etc etc, weather reports of a first hand nature based on certain criteria. They are usually the one’s who know when the tornado is on the ground before anyone else, among LOTS of other things. There aren’t many tornadoes in Virginia compared to what we get here in Texas, but they have their fair share of severe weather as well. I should know, I grew up there. SKYWARN isn’t available in only Virginia and Texas, though. Wherever there is a NWS office, SKYWARN isn’t far away. Most spotters are Ham Radio operators and are well acquainted with net control procedures as well as having a general to elevated interest in meteorology.

Interested in becoming a spotter? No prerequisites are required; not even an amateur radio license, although it makes spotting a lot easier. Contact your local NWS office, or, you can always contact Steve or myself. We’d be happy to point you in the right direction and welcome you aboard!

More information:

WakeField WX4AKQ

NWS Sterling, Va. SKYWARN

Dallas/Ft. Worth SKYWARN

Wikipedia