[FLARES] The Tropics- Real and Unreal

[dale huguley]

Hello All- This is a cross-post mainly to the APRS SIG and Florida ARES 
Group

This was supposed to be a message informing you of the South Florida 
Simulated Emergency Test (SET) for 2003. This year the strorm name is 
Wilfred.   On APRS the Name will be "DRILL" for the most part. 
The Hurricane Center has changed their format for 2003 to include 96 and 
120 hour forecasts.  I was going to use the SET  as a test for the WXSVR 
to parse the new format.   I added the ability to send e-mail and APRS 
from "canned" messages at specific times to simulate an actual tropical 
cyclone.  Since the SET is scheduled for Late April- Early May no chance 
of there being any confusion with a real storm, Right?

The Hurricane Center is issueing bulletins on Sub-Tropical Storm Ana - 
south of Bermuda.  Only the Second Tropical Cyclone during April in the 
Atlantic Basin on record.  This must have caught them somewhat by 
surprise because they are still using the 2002 format for the bulletins, 
instead of the new 5 day format for 2003.  My software is looking for 
the new format- so the present through 36 hour predicted postions are 
the only ones plotted on APRS.

Ana is being sheared and may not last 24 hours.  The first SET message 
was scheduled for 1500z on April 22nd, so I will wait to see if Ana is 
still around when Wilfred is supposed to enter stage right.  I will hold 
off sending drill messages if Ana is still active.  The SET runs though 
May 3rd, so a few missing messages at the beginning is not a big problem.

The only other April Tropical Cyclone in the Atlantic was 1992- year of 
Andrew.

73 de kg5qd Dale