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.

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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2017 ARRL Field Day is June 24-25

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2017-06-16 18:38

The Fort Worth NWS SKYWARN Radio Desk team will be active on several bands and modes during Field Day, Saturday-Sunday, June 24-25, 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 single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June of each year, more than 35,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.

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Cloud Chart

Submitted by wd5m on Mon, 2017-06-12 21:51
NOAA-NASAcloudchartP2-sc-003-540W.jpg

During HAMCOM a few people asked about a color cloud brochure handout for spotters. The printed version of this brochure may be cost prohibitive as a general hand out. However, I found the PDF versions online at the following web site locations. The JetStream - An Online School for Weather provides details associated with the cloud chart.

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A few operational thoughts for SKYWARN spotters regarding the WX5FWD Radio Desk

Submitted by wd5m on Thu, 2017-05-04 11:33

Radio propagation physics and limited resources prevent the NWS radio desk from DIRECT access on many repeaters in the North Texas county warning area (CWA). With the CWA covering 46 counties, the radio desk has direct coverage for the nearest 8 to 12 county spotter repeaters from the Fort Worth office. Despite direct radio coverage limitations, the NWS is capable of receiving spotter reports from all 46 counties.

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Continuity of Operations Test Between NWS Offices

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2016-11-04 10:27
CO-OP Test

Gary Woodall, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, National Weather Service Memphis, TN, coordinated a Continuity of Operations (CO-OP) Test on HF radios for November 3, 2016. NWS Offices participating included Fort Worth, TX (WX5FWD), Little Rock, AR (WX5LZK) and Memphis, TN (WX4MEM). HF SSB radio contact was successful on 40M and 80M bands. Jory McIntosh (KJ5RM), Rick Sagers (W7YC), Mike Heskett (WB5QLD) and David McAnally participated from the Fort Worth NWS WFO.

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