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![Previous (earlier) Story](/images/sty-down.gif "Amateur Radio is "Poster Child" of Homeland Security Grantees Gathering"){kind=small} Previous: Amateur Radio is "Poster Child" of Homeland Security Grantees Gathering |  Next: Add Spice and Members to Your Club -- (Helpful Hints That Work!) |
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
March 11, 2005
This week, we visit additional Web sites of interest to Amateur Radio weather spotters.
In response to last week’s column, “Spotting Extreme Weather,” Peter Laws, N5UWY/9, wrote, “Hams and weather just seem to go together.”
I checked and Peter is right. Google “weather” and “Amateur Radio” and the search engine returns 299,000 hits. Searching this Web site for “weather,” the ARRLWeb search engine finds 1919 matches. To support his statement, Peter sent along a couple of URLs, too.
Mike Branick, KD5BFC, at the National Weather Service (NWS) Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma, put together A Comprehensive Glossary Of Weather Terms For Storm Spotters Web page. From AC (for Anticipated Convection) to Zonal Flow, this all-inclusive lexicon includes figures to support some of the words.
 The National SKYWARN Homepage is the focal point for US ham radio operators who are involved in weather observation. |
Also from the Sooner State comes a Web page compiled by Keith Brewster, N0IAW, Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms at the University of Oklahoma. It is a list of weather spotting frequencies for every state in the union plus Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Further research on my part returned other Web connections between NOAA and ham radio. For example, the Louisville, Kentucky NWS Forecast Office has a portion of its Web site dedicated to SKYWARN with links to pertinent local and national Web sites including the National SKYWARN Homepage. The Chicago NWS Forecast Office also has a SKYWARN Web page. And NOAA’s main site has an Amateur “Ham” Radio Web page that delineates the various “National Weather Service Products” via Amateur Radio including the APRSWXNET/Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP).
My APRS weather station WA1LOU-15 is part of APRSWXNET/CWOP, so I have to give it a plug. “Originally, APRSWXNET was developed as a way for Amateur Radio operators to transmit weather data to the NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) in Boulder, Colorado for research. The success of this effort and the amount of data routinely collected have led to use by other research labs and by operational parts of NOAA including the National Weather Service. The system has also been expanded to allow collection of observations via the Internet, thereby expanding the program to persons not holding an Amateur Radio license.” That’s the CWOP part of APRSWXNET/CWOP. To learn an amazing amount of information about the system, visit the CWOP Web page.
Until next week, keep on surfin’.
Editor’s note: After writing about extreme weather last week, Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, experienced the worst driving conditions in his life due to extreme weather. To discuss whether lightning will strike twice, e-mail Stan.
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