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| Mother Nature affects our environment every day, all year long. For the last several years, the amateur radio community submitted many reports during the spring, summer, and fall seasons. The meteorologists greatly appreciate our efforts, as they use our data to issue warnings, reconstruct the storms after occurrence, and archive the data for later study and forecast design. Because of the Amateur Radio Service's dedication and reliable reporting techniques, the Milwaukee / Sullivan Weather Forecast Office (WFO MKX) has asked the Sullivan Committee to design and implement a winter version of our summer program. Our new winter program has been under internal development for a year and a half, and we proudly present it for implementation beginning December, 2001. The following sections outline our design for Winter Skywarn. We begin by defining the dangers of winter weather, followed by detailed descriptions of how to make proper winter measurements, and what qualifies as data that should be relayed to the Sullivan WFO. Finally, we describe how to route that information to WFO MKX. Please review the following materials, and be prepared for the storm. |
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| Reporting of Winter TLCS | |||||||||
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Winter Reports require TLCS, just like the Summer: Time, Location, Condition, and Station.
Please click to the left to learn more about TLCS, and how to configure your report for transmission. |
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| Winter Weather Criteria | |||||||||
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Just like our summer program, the Committee has worked hard with the WFO MKX to determine a set of criteria to be reported to the staff. Please review these criteria, so that the reports are accurate, and contain useful information that the meteorologists need. | ||||||||
| Winter Procedure | |||||||||
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The Winter Program does not feature a "live" voice net for reporting weather information.
Click to the left to learn how to make your report to the forecast office. |
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| Call-up Winter Operations | |||||||||
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Sometimes, the WFO MKX will forecast a unique winter storm, such as one that might deliver a mix of rain and snow, or "train" across the CWA. The Committee has designed a Call-up activation and reporting program to handle these conditions. Click on the left box for more information. | ||||||||
| Official Snowfall Measuring Techniques | |||||||||
| In order to have a uniform set of data reported from the field, NOAA developed an official guide to calculating snow depths. Please measure all of your observations using this guide, so that all of the reports from the storm are relative to each other, maintaining accuracy.
The original source of the techniques may be found at: The link on the left contains the same text, but without the background graphic that makes parts of it difficult to read. |
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