🚀 go-pugleaf

> ----------
> From:         Sean Carroll[SMTP:History67@AOL.COM]  wrote:
>
> This being the first chance I have had to post since Sunday nights
> Northeast
> event, please let me sound off on a couple of notes.
>
> This storm was mighty wild, especially here in central Massachusets.
> While we
> all want to let everyone know we are involve Storms like this are not the
> time.  The local SKYWARN freq. was filled with wasted bandwith.
>
[snip...]

You might be preaching to the choir on this list Sean. But I understand
your frustration and I used to get upset too. Unfortunately, there seems
little
you can do about it. You just need good net control to be able to sift
through the garbage.

I was monitoring Sunday evening in Bellingham MA. Although I am an assistant
Skywarn coordinator for Worcester Cty you probably didn't hear
from me on the air. There was simply no reportable criteria
in Bellingham. When the front passed, My wx station (Davis) reported
a gust to 26mph, and I received .25" of rain in about 15 minutes.

I immediately heard a report from my town of  50-60mph
winds and rain rate of 2"/hr. I can only assume the
report was estimated because the net control operator
never asked!  This is the only
time I got on the air, to refute the report.

People get excited, it's going to happen. The only thing we
must make sure of is that these reports don't get passed
to NWS unless they meet the criteria. And I was unhappy
to hear many net control ops Sunday *not* asking if
the reports were measured or estimated. As things got
hot, a lot of bad reports were passed on.

A long while ago I made a suggestion, which apparently
fell on deaf ears. When a net is activated, if the net controller
takes a pre-emptive roll call (before things get hot) and
pins them out on his/her local map, they can then
call specific stations in the areas they expect trouble.

This lets people key their microphones (something
everyone seems to be itching to do in bad wx)
and it lets the net have an idea of the spotter base
in his/her area. Instead of saying "Is there anyone in the
Littleton area?" when the doppler is showing a funnel
over the town, why not be able to say "Is N1XXX in
Littleton still out there? What are you seeing?"

This is on the same idea as the RACES call up for
their areas.

Well, now I'm starting to ramble, see what you did to me :)

Steve D'Amelio

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
To unsubscribe from SKYWARN send e-mail to LISTSERV@PO.UIUC.EDU with
"unsub skywarn" in the body of your message.  If you need help or more
information on the SKYWARN discussion group write to chris@siu.edu or
see http://www.inlink.com/~landmb/intro.html.  For more information
on SKYWARN activities across the country visit http://www.skywarn.com
and http://www.winternet.com/~daveej.