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.

2018 ARRL Field Day is June 23-24

Submitted by wd5m on Wed, 2018-06-20 14:23

The Fort Worth NWS SKYWARN Radio Desk team will be active on several bands and modes during Field Day, Saturday-Sunday, June 23-24, from the Fort Worth National Weather Service Forecast Office. Our special event call sign is W5T. We hope to contact you, and add your call sign and information to our log. We'll publish the bands, frequencies, and other information periodically during the event on the wx5fwd.org web site and social media WX5FWD Twitter account and FaceBook.

ARRL Field Day is the most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June, more than 40,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.

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Facebook support for API postings by Weather Message may end August 1, 2018

Submitted by wd5m on Sat, 2018-04-28 08:49

Periodically, when the embedded "SPOTTER INFORMATION STATEMENT" section references "spotter activation" we have published the NWS Hazardous Weather Outlook (HWO) product on Facebook, including links to the full text and other related information. We do this hoping to provide wider visibility to spotters, and others, that may need to check their severe weather forecasts plans. We automated this HWO posting using the Weather Message software package.

Recently, Facebook posted a notice on their blog about changes to their API that will prevent Weather Message, and similar software, from publishing messages on Facebook. This change by Facebook is schedule to occur August 1, 2018.

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2017 SKYWARN Recognition Day QSL Log

Submitted by wd5m on Sun, 2017-12-10 12:02
QSL

Thank you! Everyone who participates in SKYWARN storm spotting makes SKYWARN Recognition Day a wonderful event. We hope everyone enjoyed themselves.

The W5W/WX5FWD station logged 280 contacts in total.

We have created a log of contacts with a link to display a QSL card for printing. Click on the Read More to display the QSL Log page.

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ARRL Field Day 2017 QSL Log

Submitted by wd5m on Sat, 2017-07-15 13:26

We have published a preliminary log of Field Day contacts with a feature to display a QSL card for possible printing. We will be reviewing and updating as necessary over the next several days.

Click on Read More to display the QSL Log page.

Preliminary WX5FWD/W5T's Contest Summary Report for ARRL-FIELD-DAY

 Total Contacts = 283
 Operating Period: 2017/06/24 18:00 - 2017/06/25 18:00
 Total Contacts by Band and Mode:

 Band       CW   Phone     Dig   Total       %
 ----       --   -----     ---   -----     ---
   80        0       1       0       1       0
   40        0     107       0     107      38
   20        0      29       1      30      11
   15        0      11       0      11       4
   10        0       3       0       3       1
    6        0     131       0     131      46
            --   -----     ---   -----     ---
 Total       0     282       1     283     100

Here is a summary of the last few years for comparison:

2017 - QSOs 283   QSO points   568   Bonus points 1050
2016 - QSOs 652   QSO points  1318   Bonus points 850
2015 - QSOs 954   QSO points  1908   Bonus points 970
2014 - QSOs 202   QSO points   408   Bonus points 650
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How Spotters May Contact the NWS Radio Desk

Submitted by wd5m on Wed, 2017-06-21 12:26
radiodesk

This is a brief list of methods and links to more details on how spotters can report weather conditions to the Fort Worth NWS warning forecast office, and radio desk.

Alternative methods...

Some of this information is on the Skywarn spotter training hand out. All spotters, experienced and new, should attend training every year. Spotter training covers new information and procedures, as well as the standard spotter basic and advanced topics.

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