Skywarn for Operation

Hazel II

October 3, 2009

This exercise is different from any held in our area in a number of years.  This drill is not "time compressed" and covers the phase of response from warning, impact and rescue.  Earlier drills have dealt heavily with the recovery stage.  This drill will have the simulated hurricane entering the state and continuing to impact the area at the end of the drill as the trailing edge prepares to exist the Commonwealth.

This will require a different approach to handling Skywarn reports.  In other drills there has been time to handle Skywarn reports on voice nets.  In this SET the volume of reportable weather and damage will require the use of digital reports being sent to the NWS.  The method of choice would be the use of Winlink composite reports from regions or areas.  This would require having voice nets on various Skywarn repeaters to collect information occurring at that location.  We are planning on having a station on PSK31 HF to pick up reports from eastern and northern Virginia and enter those into the Winlink system at a local area close to Blacksburg.

On these sub-nets you would need a Winlink operator recording data and periodically sending that via Winlink to N3AO@winlink.org.  The reports should include the call, name,location of the observation and the weather conditions or other reports such as outages and closed roads etc.  Forms may be used that are placed in the "Forms" section of the site or the reporter may opt to send this report in a free style from the email form.  The form is not critical but the information is vital.

A voice net will be activated and ran on 146.745 repeater and this net will be controlled from the Blacksburg NWS office.  Critical brief traffic may be passed on this net.

Click Here to view what a sample Excel report would look like from the "Forms" section.  Note that as you type in a field, the text is wrapped and the space is expanded to allow for long reports.  You must have Excel installed on your computer to use this form.  You will not be able to write to the sample form.  This form has been converted to pdf so that all can view it.  If you choose to not use this form, feel free to use any system that works well for you to get the digital report to the NWS.