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.

NWS Special Event 2019 SKYWARN® Recognition Day

Submitted by wd5m on Thu, 2019-11-14 08:37
NWS Special EventNWS Special Event

2019 SKYWARN® Recognition Day

Fort Worth NWS CWA The 2019 SKYWARN® Recognition Day event is from Friday evening, December 6th 18:00 (6PM) CST until Saturday December 7th 18:00 (6PM) CST. Or in UTC time December 7, 2019, from 00:00 to 24:00 UTC.

SKYWARN™ Recognition Day (SRD) will mark its 20th anniversary on December 7, 0000 to 2400 UTC. This is the day each year when radio amateurs operate from National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices across the country, celebrating the long relationship between the amateur radio community and the National Weather Service SKYWARN™ program. The purpose of the event is to recognize amateur radio operators for the vital public service they perform during times of severe weather and to strengthen the bond between radio amateurs and their local NWS offices.

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Information for Storm Spotters

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2019-04-05 21:28

SKYWARN Storm Spotters should attend the annual training sessions provided by National Weather Service (NWS). Those sessions give spotters the basic information they need to safely and effectively provide severe weather reports. You are considered a trained spotter by attending a training session. Attending annually also gives you updates on the latest training information. Safety is the primary concern of the training.

If you missed the scheduled training sessions, there is spotter reference material and training on the Internet. This material is useful to the trained spotter as well.

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2019 Spotter Training Schedule

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2018-12-14 16:30
Training 2019

The North Texas SKYWARN™ Spotter Training Schedule for 2019 is being updated. Be sure to check the schedule often for updates and additions.

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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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