Severe Weather Aug 9, 2000

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Wow! Talk about jinxing yourself. I was considering sending a message to the WARN list telling everyone that we are still here, but due to the lack of severe weather there wasn’t anything to send to the list.

Obviously, that all changed today. I have been out of town in Reynoldsburg, OH (east of Columbus, OH), for training for my job, for the last two weeks. Leaving to come home today at 11:30am, I got in the car just in time to see a decent storm move through. Very impressive! Listening to the local net, it seemed to be pretty hefty. Heading south on I-71, I got close enough to Cincinnati just in time to hear the Cincinnati WARN net close.

In the evening, we were activated again. This time I was able to follow the entire net. I was pleasantly surprised by how well the net was conducted. I expected many reports not meeting our criteria. We got some, but not near as many as I thought we would get. Maybe it’s because these storms actually contained so much that actually qualified as valid reports. It seems that heavy rain and hail were the predominant culprits this time. While some wind damage reports were received, at this time it did not seem to be very widespread. (Maybe we just didn’t hear about it.) Time will tell.

For the most part, good job! Of course, until we have a perfect net, there is always room for improvement. We did hear some non-valid reports of:

– Frequent lightning
– Power outages

We ask that Cincinnati area hams occasionally check our web site at https://www.warn.org and review our reporting criteria. Anything else is not helpful, wastes air time and resources, and will NOT be relayed to the NWS. By way of reminder, NWS is looking for these criteria:

– Hail 1/2″ in diameter or larger.
– Rain 1″ per hour or greater
– Wind 50 MPH or greater
– Persistent rotation in a storm
– Any flooding in roadways or streams out of banks

I won’t elaborate any more here, but would ask once again that you review the reporting criteria on the web site. We also received a couple requests for weather forecasts or information. Our net control operators rightly referred these people to NOAA weather radio or broadcast sources. Please do not be offended if you ask for weather information and we refer you to one of these sources. We frequently do not have as much information as you can get from these sources. We also are not qualified to forecast and do not have direct contact with a meteorologist. We ask that you not ask us to provide weather information. If you listen to the net for a while, you’ll hear everything we do.

All in all though, it was a pretty good net. Special thanks to our net control operators who put in a pretty long evening (and day), Bob Kaegi – KB8TPC and Dave Stuart – KB0SLY (who are still at it as I write this).