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Letter: Why I became a weather spotter
Posted February 5, 2010
The weather has always interested me. I used to chase storms in Madison County as a firefighter with Central Townships Fire Department. Then I became an amateur radio (ham) operator. While being a ham radio operator, I learned more about the weather by being a spotter as part of the Central Ohio Severe Weather Net on the frequency of 146.760 MHz. A weather net is where area hams report local weather information over their radios to the National Weather Service.
After many years of work in the public service, I started to miss this after I became disabled in 2005. I purchased and installed a professional weather station in my home in London. Then in 2006, I started sending weather reports to the local news station and several online weather sites. I felt that this would be a great service to my community.
My weather station equipment consists of an Oregon Scientific WMR-968 weather station mounted in the backyard. The console for the weather station is in my ham shack and connected to the computer. The computer is running a program called Weather Display. This program will upload the weather data from my station to my Web site, other online weather services, as well as sending e-mail or text messages.
Weather Display also creates special files for me, the first being the WXNOW file. This provides a local weather reports via the amateur radio Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) network. The second file is a custom weather report that is created by the use of special <tags> to output the weather data that I requested at a set time interval. This file is then loaded into a program called Digital Master 780 (DM780) via a macro command in DM780. This allows me to send out a custom weather report to other ham radio operators that I talk with of several digital modes, including PSK31.
I have the ability to send e-mails or text messages to anyone with weather reports from my station in London. If you would like to be added to the list to receive these weather reports, please contact me at Mark@n8mni.com.
If you are interested in learning more about being a weather spotter, there will be training available in London. Each year the National Weather Service from Wilmington, Ohio, along with the Madison County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) and the Madison County Amateur Radio Club (www.mcarcoh.org), sponsor the Severe Weather Spotter Training.
This year the training is set for Feb. 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Madison County EMA office, 271 Elm St., London. Participants will learn their role as a spotter, important safety information, how to identify warning signs of severe weather and where to report this information. RSVP to the Madison County EMA at (740) 852-4200. Leave a message with your name and contact information.
Mark Crosbie, N8MNI
London
http://n8mni.com
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