🚀 go-pugleaf

People have been talking about relaying information to NWS and
about too much traffic.  From my experience, it seems to vary
from place to place what kind of information NWS offices want.
Some offices, especially those still going through NEXRAD
familiarization, want every report so they can "calibrate" the
radar and forecasters.  Other offices are only concerned with
reports that actually meet severe criteria  --afterall radar
is going to tell them where the generic storm stuff is.  An NWS
office that serves a largely rural population can probably afford
to take all reports as they may be few and far between.  When
you are dealing with large metro areas, however, the question
becomes is it worth taking up valuable resources (radio bandwidth
and operator time) to pass on reports of small hail and gusty
winds?  There are several possible solutions to this problem:

    1) Have spotters report only severe or near-severe events.

    2) Have spotters report all events meeting criteria to their
       local network control station but do not pass any non-severe
       reports any farther upstream.

    3) Develop an out-of-band signaling system, a rapid update
       packet-based database system for cataloging non-severe reports.

I guess it really is up to each NWS office what info they want and
subject to the capabilities of the radio operators in the chain.  For me
personally, I think that spotters should report whatever meets local
criteria.  If they are operating on a radio repeater system then
any other interested parties in the local area can listen to that
repeater and gleen whatever information they want from it.  Non-severe
reports, and that includes non-rotating wall clouds, are best handled
locally and do not necessarily need to be passed up the net.

Now I'm sure some storm freaks who work at the NWS will say, "I want
to know about every wall cloud that's sighted or every hailstone".
The question is, is this information going to make an operational
difference?  That is, is anyone at NWS actually going to see/use this
data or is it just going onto some log sheet.  If the radio network
has sufficient operators, and skilled operators at that, then there may
be no problem with relaying a lot of information but in large metro
areas or in places where the radio network is spotty, people may
have no choice but to limit what's kept and what's trashed.

Ham radio operators frequently create sophisticated networks and
protocols  --often just for the sake of having sophisticated networks
and protocols.  We need to examine how the information spotters generate
is actually being used and *that* will tell us what to do with that info.

Chicago, you've got a growing SKYWARN empire, how to you deal with reports?
What comes into your Center?  ..Chris..
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Chris Hayes Novy - WA9V   Internet: Chris@SIU.Edu
Southern Illinois Univ.     BITNET: Chris@siucvmb
Morris Library               Phone: (618) 453-1683 (work)
Systems Administration              (618) 457-6149 (home)
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