Well, we have another severe weather net under our belts. Wednesday (5/13) brought severe storms to WARN’s area of responsibility. The most prominent hazard in these storms was hail. The NWS was using reports forwarded from our field spotters through our net control to correlate with what they were seeing on radar. With the radar interpretation and the ground truth visual observations provided by the spotters, they were able to issue timely and accurate warnings to the public. As always, thanks to all who participated. Thankfully, this one happened during the day, which was a welcome change from previous late night nets.
The net controls for this event were Steve Lewis – N8TFD, Mike Perry – WB8DNZ, and Dave Stuart – KB0SLY. Comments from Steve follow.
Notes from net control Steve Lewis, N8TFD
Wednesday night’s net was a little unusual…instead of waiting for a typical line of severe thunderstorms to move through the area, the SkyWARN spotters had to endure numerous “pop-up” storms that occurred over about a 4-and-a-half hour span.
Thanks to all the stations that stayed around all of that time to assist the net if needed.
This was the first net of the ’98 season that didn’t occur (at least partially) during the overnight hours. More spotters were available to participate, and many did check-in to the net.
Some “rules of the road” for the WARN net
1) Don’t ask for a re-cap of the watches and warnings. When time allows, we will do that occasionally to remind all stations on the net of what areas the NWS is particularly interested in.
2) Don’t ask us to guess what is going to happen next. None of the net controls are meteorologists…in fact, our level of training is very similar to yours.
3) Many times, the best report is NO REPORT AT ALL. If you are not experiencing weather that meets the severe reporting criteria, and we haven’t asked for general check-in’s from your county, STAND BY! Your turn to contribute will probably come up soon, on a future net if not on the current one.
4) Feel free to use repeaters that associate with the WARN net if you need to do so (ie out of range of 146.88-), and if you hear net activity on them. 146.655- (Clermont County), 146.865- (Warren County), 147.255+ and 147.375+ (northern Kentucky), and 146.805- (southeast Indiana) are among these.
5) If you receive a second/third-hand report and can not independently verify it, please do not forward the report to us. If the NWS has questions about the report, it’s quite possible that no one will be able to answer them!
Thanks again to all the stations for checking in…hopefully this was a chance for all of you to check out your equipment, and make sure you are ready for the next one…there is always a possibility that the next one will be much more eventful!