N3CDX Amateur Radio Home Page
Greenville,Pa
Mercer County Skywarn Information
SKYWARN is a concept developed in the early 1970s that was intended to promote a cooperative effort between the National Weather Service and communities. The emphasis of the effort is often focused on the storm spotter, an individual who takes a position near their community and reports wind gusts, hail size, rainfall, and cloud formations that could signal a developing tornado. Another part of SKYWARN is the receipt and effective distribution of National Weather Service information.SKYWARN is a group of trained severe weather spotters that report directly to the National Weather Service.
SKYWARN is not a club or organization, however, in some areas where Emergency Management programs do not perform the function, people have organized SKYWARN groups that work independent of a parent government agency and feed valuable information to the National Weather Service. While this provides the radar meteorologist with much needed input, the circuit is not complete if the information does not reach those who can activate sirens or local broadcast systems.
SKYWARN spotters are not by definition "Storm Chasers". While their functions and methods are similar, the spotter stays close to home and usually has ties to a local agency. Storm chasers often cover hundreds of miles a day. The term Storm Chaser covers a wide variety of people. Some are meteorologists doing specific research or are gathering basic information (like video) for training and comparison to radar data.
The Weather Office and/or emergency management authorities may activate the Skywarn net usually whenever there is a threat severe weather or the forecast office issues a severe thunderstorm watch, tornado watch, or flood watch. In this case, information will be relayed through our amateur radio repeater.
The NWS staff at the Pittsburgh Forecast Office, are responsible for issuing warnings for most of Western Pennsylvania. Skywarn volunteers become our eyes and ears helping to provide better weather watch and warning services to the public.
The ground truth reports from SKYWARN spotters are a vital link in using advanced radar data and meteorological skills to carry out our mission. Their observations also provide us with information in compiling documentation of severe weather events and verification of warnings. These reports become part of the United States Storm Data publication, which is used by researchers and also provides climatological data on a wide variety of unusual weather phenomenom, including statistics on death, injuries, and property and crop damage.
Over half of our 1600 + spotters are also licensed amateur radio operators (a.k.a hams). The hams throughout many of our counties meet and organize their spotter efforts on one radio frequency (network or nets), when severe weather threatens. Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) provides communication support for the SKYWARN program.
