Sky Warn

“SKYWARN™ is a concept developed in the early 1970s that was intended to promote a cooperative effort between the National Weather Service and communities. The emphasis of the effort is often focused on the storm spotter, an individual who takes a position near their community and reports wind gusts, hail size, rainfall, and cloud formations that could signal a developing tornado. Another part of SKYWARN™ is the receipt and effective distribution of National Weather Service information.”

“The organization of spotters and the distribution of warning information may lies with the National Weather Service or with an emergency management agency within the community. This agency could be a police or fire department, or often is an emergency management/service group (what people might still think of as civil defense groups). This varies across the country however, with local national weather service offices taking the lead in some locations, while emergency management takes the lead in other areas.”

“SKYWARN™ is not a club or organization, however, in some areas where Emergency Management programs do not perform the function, people have organized SKYWARN™ groups that work independent of a parent government agency and feed valuable information to the National Weather Service. While this provides the radar meteorologist with much needed input, the circuit is not complete if the information does not reach those who can activate sirens or local broadcast systems.”

“SKYWARN™ spotters are not by definition "Storm Chasers". While their functions and methods are similar, the spotter stays close to home and usually has ties to a local agency. Storm chasers often cover hundreds of miles a day. The term Storm Chaser covers a wide variety of people. Some are meteorologists doing specific research or are gathering basic information (like video) for training and comparison to radar data. Others chase storms to provide live information for the media, and others simply do it for the thrill.”

“Storm Spotting and Storm Chasing is dangerous and should not be done without proper training, experience and equipment.”

“The National Weather Service conducts spotter training classes across the United States, and your local National Weather Service office should be consulted as to when the next class will be held.”

“The SKYWARN program in Central Indiana has been active for many years. The basic core values have changed very little during that period.”

“The Central Indiana SKYWARN Association, Inc., was incorporated in June of 1999. Since that time there have been many changes in the operation of the SKYWARN network. The voice operation was moved to the Indianapolis Carmel Experimenters (www.w9ice.com) 146.97/442.65 repeater system during the spring of 2001. There have been many enhancements to the system such as the addition to link the Illiana SKYWARN Network (www.illianaskywarn.net) 444.35 repeater, which is located just west of Terre Haute, IN. This system enhances the coverage for the southwestern counties, including coverage into Eastern Illinois. In addition, the Association was granted access to the WQKC-FM tower located in Freetown, in Jackson County. This node consists of a two-meter remote base arrangement with a link to the 442.65 repeater in Indianapolis. The node coverage will include Jackson, Jennings, Lawrence, Monroe, Bartholomew and surrounding counties.”

“In addition to improving the voice network, the Association has developed a training video in conjunction with the Indianapolis NWS which is being shown at SKYWARN spotter training sessions. In the near future other training guides will be posted on our Web page. These training guides will not be a substitute for SKYWARN spotter training held by the National Weather Service. They are meant to augment the normal spotter training class and to be viewed at anytime to refresh all spotters recollection as to cloud formations and as a reminder of the power and fury of severe weather.”

Information courtesy of the Central Indiana SkyWarn website at:

The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a private-public partnership with three main goals: 1) to collect weather data contributed by citizens; 2) to make these data available for weather services and homeland security; and 3) to provide feedback to the data contributors so that they have the tools to check and improve their data quality. In fact, the web address, wxqa.com, stands for weather quality assurance.

What is CoCoRaHS?

“CoCoRaHS is an acronym for the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. CoCoRaHS is a unique, non-profit, community-based network of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds working together to measure and map precipitation (rain, hail and snow). By using low-cost measurement tools, stressing training and education, and utilizing an interactive Web-site, our aim is to provide the highest quality data for natural resource, education and research applications. We currently operate in many states across the country. If we are not in your state please drop us a line and let us know that you have an interest in participating. This helps us know where a desire exists for the network and where to focus our future expansion efforts.”