Operation Winter Fury Message Information
This exercise is designed to improve skills with messages handling in a simulated emergency settings. Traffic will be created for each person, group or agency participating. This means that you would receive a number of messages prior to the exercise that will be outgoing from your area. A number of messages are designed to flow into your area. For these messages that you receive, you will generate a response based on the simulated conditions at your location. If you have an agency representative present please have that person to give you the reply to the traffic.
The following are some examples. Your have reported two feet of snow in your area with some drifting beginning to occur. Based on this information, a message may be addressed to you about roadways. "Please advise on routes open into your location from Roanoke, will four wheel or all wheel drive vehicles be required to reach your location with needed supplies via these routes." You will have no "canned" message to reply to this questions, so you would compose a common sense answer. This answer may read something likes this, "You may use 2 wheel drive dual wheel trucks to reach the Rt 221 staging area at Dugspur, which is the Dugspur Rescue Squad parking area. We will break down your load and deliver to required locations via 4-wheel drives. Route 221 has been cleared but still is mostly snow covered. I would advise bringing chains in the event that heavy snow begins to fall again."
For Skywarn reports, you will be sent a description of simulated weather events that will occur in your area and the time sequence. If the SKWARN net needs weather information from your area, base your report on what is in the scenario. There may be varying weather conditions in a county so feel free to report even if someone from your area has already submitted a weather report.
Example, "We have 1 inch of ice buildup at Cana and freezing rains continues to fall" a second report from the same county will be sent that reads, "Roadways covered with ice and heavy wet snow is now falling at the rate of 2" per hour. We have 2" of measured snowfall. Received a report from W4ZZZ that he has 6" of measured snow on White Top in Grayson County at an elevation of 4200 feet." One of these locations is below the Blue Ridge and the second is on the mountains so weather conditions are very different.
Try to use all modes available to you. For long haul voice use HF SSB, CW, and broad-coverage repeaters. For longer digital messages that require precision use Winlink or Packet. For local and regional traffic use VHF/UHF FM through repeaters and simplex were possible. If you have messages that require a long haul and you do not have Winlink or HF privileges, take your traffic to a local net and someone will pick it up and move it to the distant location.
Messages send to Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) should be formatted with the CSALTT content. This is (C) Capability (S) Size (A) Amount (L) Location (T) Time (T) Type.
If you have questions contact me or call 276-398-3548.
