[FLham] NWS Honors Ham Radio

[Radioguy]

National Weather Service Honors Ham Radio Dec 3

Newington, CT  Nov 29, 2005 --  The seventh annual SKYWARN 
Recognition special event will take place Saturday, December 
3.  Cosponsored by the National Weather Service (NWS) and ARRL, 
SKYWARN Recognition Day is the National Weather Service's way of 
expressing its appreciation to Amateur Radio operators for their 
commitment to helping keep communities safe.

"Ham radio operators volunteering as storm spotters are an extremely 
valuable asset to National Weather Service operations since they are 
cross-trained in both communications and severe storm recognition," 
says organizer Scott Mentzer, N0QE, the Meteorologist-In-Charge at 
the Goodland, Kansas NWS office.

Last year, 114 NWS offices across the country participated in SRD, 
says David Floyd, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at Goodland.

According to Floyd, in typical SKYWARN operations during severe 
weather, direct communication between mobile spotters and local NWS 
offices provides critical "ground truth" information for forecasters. 
"Spotter reports of hail size, wind damage and surface-based rotation 
in real time greatly assist the radar warning operator, since that 
information can be correlated with Doppler radar displays," he says. 
The result may be a more strongly worded statement to convey greater 
urgency or issue a tornado warning a few minutes earlier than would 
otherwise have been possible.

"While NWS offices utilize the real-time reporting of severe weather 
events to assist in warning operations, hurricanes Katrina and Rita 
have shown us that ham radio operators are equally important during 
the recovery phase of natural disasters," Floyd points out.

Floyd also cites the example of the Hurricane Watch Net (HWN). He 
notes that the HWN, which organized in 1965 during Hurricane Betsy, 
started out as an informal group of amateurs but has since developed 
a formal relationship with the National Hurricane Center in Miami via 
its Amateur Radio station WX4NHC. Ham radio operators and volunteers 
at Miami work together when hurricanes threaten to provide real-time 
weather data and damage reports to the Hurricane Center's forecasters.

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