Warren Skywarn Coordinators Meeting

Some updates from the Skywarn Coordinators Meeting yesterday and I wanted to bring you all up to speed on some of the things discussed:

Snow reports

We have always been told in training (and the existing reportingparameters) that for our area we are to report when we get 4" of snow,and then the total snowfall. Going forward, There will benotifications sent out as to exactly what they will be looking for asin snow start times, periodic measurements and storm totals.

Lightning Damage reports

Lightning has never been a reportable event, however now they arelooking for reports of lightning damage. This will require morescanner listening than weather spotting. Remember, an alarm systemactiviation, or a report of a possible house struck won't bereportable, however a confirmed structure fire due to lightning (orsomething similar) would be. Anyone injured by lightning should bereported as well. You should wait until the emergency units arrive onscene to confirm the damage/injury before making a report.

Inactive Spotters

The skywarn advisory commitee will be releasing criteria as to whatkeeps a spotter active. This is to weed out the high number ofinactive spotters that are on the roster. This is supposed to becompleted by summer.

Storm Based Warnings

Effective 10/1/07, the NWS will be moving from County Based Warningsto Storm Based Warnings. What this means is instead of putting anentire county under a Severe storm warning, only the actual affectedarea's will be put under a warning now. Although this won't affectRadio & text warnings, the graphics you see on the Web/TV will nowshow the exact warning area.

Getting Non-Amateur radio licensed spotters involvedWe are looking for more ways to get spotters who are not hamsinvolved. One of them is to work on articles for the Mt. HollySkywarn News Letter: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/phi/skywarn/newsletter.html

If you have any other ideas, you can contact Joe Miketta(joseph.miketta@noaa.gov) or Larry Nierenberg(Larry.Nierenberg@noaa.gov). We are also in the process of revamping the Warren County RACES/ARESwebsite and we do have a skywarn link on there (www.wc2em.net:8080). If anyone would like to work on that portion of the site please let meknow.

Finally, I am looking to come up with a way to add automatic skywarnactivation paging to the paging system. I will send out more infowhen I get closer to making it work.