WARN is the amateur radio organization charged by the Wilmington, OH office of the the National Weather Service to collect and relay severe weather reports from Cincinnati area HAMs to the NWS. WARN is the local chapter of a national organization called Skywarn.
We are NOT storm chasers. The National Weather Service in Wilmington and WARN both discourage leaving the relative safety of a building to venture out looking for severe weather. This can result in all sorts of bad things including hail damage to your car (or your head). Or you could get to see a tornado from a lot closer than you expected. The good part about that is that coverage from your 5 watt handheld amateur radio transceiver is much better from 2000 feet in the air. Don’t do it! We want reports from where you are.
If you want to know more, we suggest you attend a NWS spotter training course. Numerous courses are offered every spring. If you are interested, subscribe to the mailing list here and we will post the course dates when they are announced.
Our net control point is located at WLW radio. We use a combination of 2M and 70cm voice radios to perform net functions.
All operations from the net control point are conducted using the call sign W8NWS – Get it? W8 National Weather Service. Great call, huh?
WARN also operates the W8NWS UHF repeater on 443.70 covering most of the Cincinnati area.
