Severe weather network links: Using Skywarn and ham radios to track storms

Skywarn logo, National Weather Service

I was tuned in to Skywarn last night for the first time as severe weather rolled through. This network, which is carried over amateur radio on repeater N8DUY (145.150 Mhz) and K8RUR (146.920 Mhz), is also carried on the Internet through Radio Reference. Skywarn told me about tornadoes observed by trained spotters, water across the road and trees down. Last night there were 35 people on the network, radioing in reports from all over Washtenaw County.

Here's more information about that emergency communications network, coordinated by the National Weather Service and used to coordinate real-time reporting of severe weather events nationwide. The Skywarn.ORG national home page gives you a single point of entry into the whole network.

What is Skywarn? The Washtenaw County Emergency Management Office has a good description:

"Skywarn is a volunteer partnership established by the National Weather Service and advanced by local emergency managers across the nation that utilizes FCC licensed amateur radio operators who take additional severe weather detection training and report severe weather events as they happen and in real time... using established communications links (called "nets") with county Emergency Operations Centers which are in direct contact with weather service meteorologists."

More information: Wasthenaw County Emergency Management severe weather

National Weather Service Skywarn gives a complete guide to the program nationwide:

"The effects of severe weather are felt every year by many Americans. To obtain critical weather information, NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, established SKYWARNÂ® with partner organizations. SKYWARNÂ® is a volunteer program with nearly 290,000 trained severe weather spotters. These volunteers help keep their local communities safe by providing timely and accurate reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service."

The service is related to the StormReady program for communities, also run by the National Weather Service. StormReady provides a checklist for communities to improve their severe weather handling, and emergency communications is key to this effort.

Key to the network are a series of trained spotters. These are amateurs who have acquired a ham radio license and who have gone through spotter training. A Basic Spotters' Field Guide (.pdf) and Advanced Spotters' Field Guide (.pdf) give you a sense for the knowledge required, and it's about a 2.5 hour class to get up to speed.

Skywarn is an amateur radio network. It is not run over the Internet, so it doesn't depend on AT&T or Comcast or some router in some waterlogged basement network operations center working. It doesn't depend on the cell phone system, so a cell tower can be down or clogged with calls and the network can still work. Ham radios are easily powered by batteries, so it works when DTE has a power outage. Ham radios are also mobile, so the people running it can go where the action is and report from the field.

The Skywarn network is only activated in the anticipation of severe weather. If you read National Weather Service forecasts, you will see text like

SPOTTER INFORMATION STATEMENT...

SPOTTER ACTIVATION WILL NOT BE NEEDED TODAY AND TONIGHT.
SPOTTER ACTIVATION MAY BE NEEDED THROUGH TONIGHT.

This is a signal to area emergency operations coordinators to notify spotters in their area to be ready to report damage.

Skywarn vs. Twitter

It's a worthwhile point of comparison to look at how Skywarn and Twitter differ for the reporting of severe events. Both systems were in widespread use yesterday. Twitter carried about 1,600 messages using the #earthquake tag yesterday, not all of which referred to the Ontario-Quebec 5.0 magnitude tremor. Over the past week, 57 people have used the #miwx tag for Michigan weather andÂ 51 people have used the #wmiwx tag for Western Michigan weather. Indiana weather and Ohio weather also get some measure of routine use.

Twitter is great, except of course when it doesn't work. The World Cup has strained that network, with periodic outages that persist for minutes - minutes that count when a storm is bearing down on you. Radio, because it doesn't require a central coordinating computer system to run, is more resilient in times of extremes.

Because it is run over radio frequencies that don't travel very far, Skywarn networks can carry traffic which is readily described as "hyperlocal." A tree down across a road is not something that needs to be broadcast throughout the globe, but getting that news to local authorities and area citizens in time can save a life.

Edward Vielmetti writes about severe weather from his basement for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.Â