Serving for more than thirty years, 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.

Navarro, Limestone and Freestone planning to link repeaters

Submitted by wd5m on Sat, 2011-03-26 19:06

Good news! We've received word that Navarro, Limestone and Freestone are planning to link repeaters for testing, possibly to support SKYWARN nets. They have an EchoLink node on their 145.290 machine too, which will allow direct access from the NWS radio desk. See the News page at their web site, www.nflarc.com

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NWS February 2011 Review

Submitted by wd5m on Wed, 2011-03-23 18:59

February 2011 will be remembered for the extraordinarily cold weather that began the month. For Dallas/Fort Worth, there were several events that had not occurred in many years:

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Spring Flooding Underway, Expected to Worsen through April

Submitted by wd5m on Thu, 2011-03-17 12:40

With spring flooding already underway over portions of the U.S., NOAA forecasters are warning the worst is yet to come. Almost half the country – from the North Central U.S. through the Midwest and the Northeast – has an above-average risk of flooding over the next few weeks, according to the annual spring outlook released today by NOAA’s National Weather Service. This week is also national Flood Safety Awareness Week, and NOAA has partnered with FEMA to encourage residents to prepare for this imminent threat.

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Radar’s next phase

Submitted by wd5m on Tue, 2011-03-15 19:50

Dual polarization holds promise for both research and weather forecasting

Bob Henson | 11 March 2010 • The biggest upgrade to the U.S. weather-radar network in 15 years gets rolling this winter with a minimum of fanfare—debuting under the radar, as it were. But the new capabilities should get their fair share of attention in the long run.

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Hole Punch Clouds

Submitted by wd5m on Wed, 2011-01-12 10:21

Hole Punch Clouds are simply high clouds that look like somebody punched a hole in them. The name is not scientific and sometimes you hear it as Punch Hole Clouds but they look unusual. If you look you could probably see them fairly often when we have Cirrus clouds but usually they are not too dramatic. On December 11, 2003 the sky was dramatic over Mobile County, Alabama. Washington County, Alabama later saw a similar event on January 29, 2007.

Read the story at Hole Punch Clouds.


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