The WX5FWD SKYWARN™ team are volunteer radio operator liaisons for the Fort Worth National Weather Service (NWS) North Texas SKYWARN™ Spotters. During SKYWARN events, you are reporting information to our team and the NWS warning forecasters. Three goals of a storm spotter are to safely observe, identify and report conditions.

Weather spotters provide what's called "ground truth" to the National Weather Service and emergency weather management. Spotters are needed because, while radar is very good at helping the National Weather Service see what's going on in the upper atmosphere, it's unable to detect what's actually happening on the ground because of the curvature of the Earth. Knowing the "ground truth" about a weather event from the location can be the deciding factor to issue a warning.

Placefiles and Shapefiles for GRLevel3

Submitted by wd5m on Sat, 2020-11-14 23:28
Placefile We've created some GRLevel3 placefiles and shapefiles for SKYWARN® repeaters and roads in the County Warning Area (CWA).
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NWS UPDATE: 2020-2021 Winter Outlook

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2020-10-30 15:26
Concern

From: National Weather Service, Fort Worth
Date: Friday, 30 October 2020 14:32 CDT

Good afternoon,

NOAA’s official Winter Outlook was released a few weeks ago by the Climate Prediction Center. In late September, we sent an email discussing the La Niña Advisory that had been issued and what that could mean for North and Central Texas this coming winter. The official Winter Outlook continues to support La Niña conditions for our area which favors above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation this winter.

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SKYWARN reporting with Radio over Internet Protocol (RoIP) Links

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2020-08-28 21:42

The Ft. Worth NWS SKYWARN Team operate multiple amateur radio systems, including RoIP systems such as EchoLink and IRLP. Our RoIP systems are normally dedicated to direct connections with remote SKYWARN spotter radio stations in affected areas during weather events.

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SKYWARN® Radio Network Conference Guidelines

Submitted by wd5m on Wed, 2020-04-08 17:31

Emergency traffic, tornado activity or weather that is an imminent threat to life and/or property has top priority.

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NWS Spotter Radio Desk Staffing with COVID-19

Submitted by wd5m on Tue, 2020-03-17 19:42

The National Weather Service, and our spotter radio desk team, are weighing risks versus benefit of staffing the NWS Spotter radio desk with the current COVID-19 pandemic. It is possible we may not place radio desk volunteers at the NWS. If that occurs, our radio volunteers will make efforts to monitor affected areas with home radio stations, and via linked radio systems, to relay spotter reports to the NWS. In the event spotters are unable to reach NWS radio desk operators, please use other means to relay your spotter reports to the NWS as outlined in spotter training. These include the following methods:

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