Hi Everyone, I hope you all had a good Christmas and have a Happy New Year. 2014 was an active year for ALERT with new members, new equipment and new opportunities. I feel 2015 will be a good year for ALERT and I look forward seeing what the New Year will bring. A brief rundown of the regular ALERT schedule for the first six months is: January 13 Regular Meeting February 10 Regular Meeting March 7 & 8 Birmingham Hamfest / ALERT & NWS table & Skywarn Forum March 10 Regular Meeting / Nominating Committee Formed April 14 Regular Meeting / Nominating Committee Report May 12 Regular Meeting / ALERT Elections June 9 Regular Meeting July 14 Regular Meeting / New Officers Take Office / Dues Due $$$ ALERT appreciates your efforts and participation in responding to callouts, serving in the various ALERT offices, and for supporting our organization, both on the air and off. YOUR ALERT thanks you! ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Winter Weather Preparations As we dig deeper into winter, the time will come when the dreaded “S” word will be mentioned & the usual Southern Snow problems will occur. Keeping this in mind, you should think about creating or updating an emergency kit for your car. A Winter Survival Car Kit should include: • Jumper cables to restart engine • Cat litter or sand for tire traction • Shovel to scrape snow away from tires • Ice scraper to clear windshield • Warm clothes including gloves, a hat, sturdy boots, warm jacket and even a change of clothes • Blankets to keep warm inside the vehicle • Flashlights and extra batteries for increased visibility • First aid kit including necessary medications in case you are stuck on the road • Food pack items containing protein such as nuts and energy bars, or Snickers Bars also canned fruit or meat and a portable can opener are good additions • Water for each person in your car and any pets you might carry • AM/FM radio to listen to traffic reports and emergency messages, should the car battery go dead • Bring a fully charged cell phone with a list of emergency numbers (don’t forget your mobile phone charger) and if you have your old cellphone, charge it and keep it handy. You can still make 911 calls on it. • Road flares or reflective triangles • Make sure your gas tank is full • Baby formula and diapers if you have a small child • A charged up 2 Meter HT & a cussed CB radio for when you can’t find a soul on the forest of repeaters that your HT or mobile rig are “kerchunking”. Should you find yourself stranded, be safe and stay in your car, put on your flashers, tie a bright cloth to the antenna, call for help and wait until it arrives. You don’t want to wander aimlessly seeking shelter, when your car already is a shelter. Even if it got buried in snow, which isn’t going to happen in Alabama anyway, all you would end up with is an igloo with bucket seats. Unless you actually SEE your destination and how to SAFELY get there, without crossing downed power lines, STAY PUT! A car is a lot easier to find than a freeze dried body, or in the case of downed power lines, a well roasted one. Be aware of potential hazardous weather well before it happens. Reference the NWS Hazardous Weather Outlook or HWO http://www.srh.noaa.gov/bmx/?n=hwo and reliable media sources. Be very wary of Internet and especially Facebook weather sources and rumormongering. Flashy graphics doesn’t necessarily guarantee flashy results, accuracy or truthfulness. Blatant hoaxes and honest mistakes abounded last year and certainly will this year also. As this event nears stay tuned to your weather sources & make reasonable preparations. Eighteen loaves of bread & 42 gallons of milk don’t fit that description. The items in the above list, canned food, drinks and so forth do. And, remember that EVEN IF IT DOES SNOW, that this is Alabama. In two days there will be a heat wave. So try to relax and enjoy the snowy adventure. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Mark’s Almanac January is named for the Roman god Janus, the god of gates and doors, and so openings and beginnings. January receives more sunlight than December, but the equilibrium between incoming solar heat and the heat radiated into space by the northern snowfields does not peak until late January and early February, six weeks after winter solstice. So the weather continues to cool, with January 8 – 20 being the coldest part of the year. Typically in January there is a 53% chance of up to one inch of snow & a 25% chance of over one inch of snow. With the exception of the southern tip of Nova Scotia, all of Canada and roughly one half of the Continental US, or “CONUS”, are now covered with snow. Canada’s Hudson’s Bay is frozen, as is the ocean water between Baffin Island and Greenland. http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_usa.gif Barometric pressure is highest in January. Looking skyward, Mercury is emerging from the deep glow of the sunset, shining just to the lower right of much brighter Venus. Brilliant Venus shines low through the glow of sunset, appearing 30 to 40 minutes after sundown above the southwest horizon. Mars in Capricorn glows in the Southwest during and after twilight and sets around 8PM. As Mars sets in the Southwest, Giant Jupiter is rising in the east-northeast in western Leo around 8PM. Saturn is low in the southeastern sky between Libra and Scorpius before and during dawn. Uranus in Pisces is high in the south right after dark. Neptune in Aquarius is getting low in the southwest after dark. The Quadrantid Meteor Shower will occur January 3 & 4. This is an above average shower producing between 40 to 100 meteors per hour radiating from the constellation Bootes, in the area near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper and the head of Draco the Dragon. This shower is a quirky shower in that its particle stream is very narrow. Therefore, the peak time is only a couple of hours, and that peak varies each year. According the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s “Observer’s Handbook 2015” the peak will occur at 8PM CDT on January 3, which will put the stream close to the, if not below the northeast horizon. But, as will all things astronomical, the timing may slip, so one should keep looking through the night, and even if the radiant point is below the horizon, they will still be zipping overhead and will appear longer. This year’s shower will be competing with a Full Moon, but, it will still be worth the effort. This shower is believed to be produced by dust grains from burnt out comet 2003 EH1, which may also be the remainder of comet c/1490 Y1, which was lost to history after a prominent meteor shower was observed in 1490, possibly due to the breakup of the comet. The Quadrantid meteors take their name from an obsolete constellation, Quadrans Muralis, found in early 19th-century star atlases between Draco, Hercules, and Bootes. In the 1800’s astronomers were naming and renaming constellations, often “stealing stars” from existing constellations, and naming them for whatever, or whoever suited them. Quadrans Muralis was removed, along with a few other constellations, from crowded sky maps in 1922 when the International Astronomical Union adopted the modern list of 88 officially-recognized constellations. The Quadrantids Shower, were “re-zoned” to Bootes after Quadrans Muralis disappeared, but kept their name possibly because another shower was already widely-known to meteor watchers as the “Bootids”, which peaks in June. Interesting to note is that the stars that make up our constellations rotate around the galactic center of the Milky Way at different speeds. Over time the constellations will appear to deform and then cease to exist. In 20,000 years, none of the currently observed constellations will be found in the night skies. Guess I had better plan on getting some new star charts by then. January’s Full Moon is “Wolf Moon” in Native American folklore. Coincidentally, January was called “Wulf-Monath” or “Wolf Month” by the Saxons. So called because this full Moon appeared when wolves howled in hunger outside the villages. It has also been called “Old Moon” and “Moon After Yule”. Full Moon will occur Sunday January 4, 10:53 PM CST, and New Moon will occur Tuesday January 20, 7:14 AM CST 1781 planets have been confirmed beyond our star system as of December 22, 2014, per NASA’s Exoplanet Archive http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… This month’s meeting will be on January 13 at 7PM at the National Weather Service Forecast office at the Shelby County Airport. If for some reason you cannot attend the meeting in person, you can still participate via telephone. The teleconference number is 1-877-951-0997 & and the participant code is 741083. Did you know that the Birmingham Hamfest is only nine weeks away, March 7 & 8? Hope to see you there! Mark / WD4NYL Editor ALERT Newsletter

Hi everyone and Merry Christmas! Christmas is my favorite time of the year. Christmastime is a time of wonder & mystery. A time of bright lights, shining trees and the time of hide and seek, as presents are hidden from inquiring minds and fingers. People smile more this time of year and are friendlier, as they drift from store to store looking for gifts and treasures. It is a time of Santa, elves and Elvis having a “Blue, blu blu blu Christmas”. Of manger scenes, shepherds and of the Christ Child. And, it is a time when one’s mind and memories drift back to days of childhood, and Christmases now long gone by. And, towards friends and family, some here, some now gone & you long that they were once again near, as it was once upon a time. And, it’s a time to remember that the true “reason for the season” occurred in a manger, long, long ago on that first cold and chilly “Silent Night.” Christmas is still a special time, a magical time…. So as you go about your Christmas preparations remember the magic that was once there when you were a child & don’t let that magic die. For Christmas truly is “the most wonderful time of the year”. …………………………………………………………………………………………….. Mark’s Almanac December, the tenth Roman Month, is the cloudiest month of the year, with only 40 to 60% of possible sunshine poking through the clouds. It is also the stormiest month of the year for the Continental US & the Gulf of Mexico. By “stormy” meaning large-scale storms, not necessarily the tornadic storms that they bring, even though we are still in the Second Tornado Season. A region of heavy rainfall usually forms from Texas to Northwest Florida to Tennessee and Arkansas. Cold waves bringing rain, snow, ice and occasionally tornadoes, sweep across the region. December can be cloudy and cold, and, then it can swing back into spring like warmth, luring plants to bloom early, only to have the frosts and freezes return and the plants are “nipped in the bud”. Hurricane season is now “officially” over, however Mother Nature sometimes throws a surprise in to make life interesting. In 122 years of records, from 1851 to 2013 there have been 6 December hurricanes. The last December hurricane being Hurricane Epsilon during the 2005 season, the year in which we ran out of hurricane names. That year also featured Tropical Storm Zeta, the latest forming Tropical Storm which formed on December 30, 2005 and lasted until January 7, 2006. Looking skyward, we are experiencing a temporary planetary dearth as Mercury, Venus and Saturn are currently lost in the glow of the Sun. Mars is still with us however, glowing in the southwest during and after twilight, setting around 8 PM. Jupiter rises in the east-northeast around 10 or 11 PM and shines brightly in western Leo. Uranus is high in the southeast in Pisces just after dark. Neptune is high in the south in Aquarius also the early evening sky. December’s Full Moon occurs on December 6 at 6:27 AM. Decembers Full Moon was called “Full Cold Moon” in Native American folklore. This Full Moon’s name comes because this is the time of year when the cold winter air settles in and the nights become long and dark. This moon has also been known as the Moon Before Yule and the Full Long Nights Moon. The Geminid Meteor Shower peaks on December 13-14. The Geminids is one of the year’s best meteor showers, and my personal favorite. It’s a consistent and prolific shower, and usually the most satisfying of all the annual showers, even surpassing the more widely recognized Perseids of August. This shower typically produces 50 or more multicolored meteors and fireballs an hour, or about one every minute, and 120 per hour at its peak. As a general rule, the dazzling Geminid meteor shower starts around mid-evening and tends to pick up steam as evening deepens into late night. No matter where you live worldwide, the greatest number of meteors usually fall in the wee hours after midnight, or for a few hours centered around 2 a.m. local time. If you’re game, you can watch the Geminid shower all the way from mid-evening until dawn. This year we will have the disadvantage of a waning Gibbous moon which will interfere with the shower, but, it will still be worth the effort. The Geminid’s are associated with mysterious asteroid 3200 Phaethon. 3200 Phaethon is an asteroid that occasionally sprouts a comet-like tail, which it shouldn’t do and it doesn’t produce enough debris to cause a meteor shower, and yet it does. The day with the least sunlight will occur as Winter Solstice arrives December 21 at 5:03 PM CST. The South Pole of the earth will be tilted toward the Sun, which will have reached its southernmost position in the sky and will be directly over the Tropic of Capricorn at 23.44 degrees south latitude. This is the first day of winter (winter solstice) in the Northern Hemisphere and the first day of summer (summer solstice) in the Southern Hemisphere. One little known fact is that due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis and it’s mildly eccentric egg shaped orbit that the sun will set earlier the first week of December than it does at Winter Solstice, the longest night and shortest day of the year. If one looks at the sunrise/sunset and length of day data from the US Naval Observatory, you will find that the sun sets four minutes earlier on December 7, than it does December 21. This is counterbalanced by sunrise coming later and later in the December mornings, which clips more sunlight off at sunrise than the day gains at sunset. The actual data is: Dec 7 Sunrise 6:38 AM Sunset 4:39 PM Length of day 10 hours 1 minute Dec 21 Sunrise 6:48 AM Sunset 4:43 PM Length of day 9 hours 56 minutes Jan 7 Sunrise 6:52 AM Sunset 4:55 PM Length of day 10 hours 3 minutes Don’t feel bad about our short days, however. Feel bad for poor Point Barrow Alaska, where the Sun has now completely disappeared and won’t reappear until January 22, when it will glow for an entire 23 minutes. New Moon will occur On December 21, at 6:36 PM CST, as the Moon will be directly between the Earth and the Sun and will not be visible from Earth. This is the best time of the month to observe faint objects such as galaxies and star clusters because there is no moonlight to interfere. The Ursids Meteor Shower will occur on the night of December 22 & 23. The Ursids is a minor meteor shower producing only about 5 – 10 meteors per hour. It is produced by dust grains left behind by comet Tuttle, which was first discovered in 1790. The shower runs annually from December 17 – 25. It peaks this year on the night of the 22nd. This will be one of the best years to observe the Ursids because there will be no moonlight to interfere with the show. Best viewing will be just after midnight from a dark location far away from city lights. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Ursa Minor, but can appear anywhere in the sky. 1773 planets have been confirmed beyond our star system as of November 19, 2014. ………………………………………………………………………………………. This month’s meeting will be on December 9 at 7PM at the National Weather Service Forecast office at the Shelby County Airport. December’s meeting will feature the ALERT Christmas party! You are all cordially invited to the ALERT Christmas party Tuesday, December 9 at the NWS Forecast Office. This is a Pot Luck affair, which means you bring your own pot, meaning a pot with food in it, a covered dish, or desert, but no booze. Bring your spouse, kids, and perspective members and be prepared to have Christmas fun! If you plan on attending, please contact Johnnie Knobloch, KJ4OPX at 934-7392 or wxjohnnie@gmail.com and let him know how many are coming and what you might be bringing. I hope to see you there. Until then, from the house of Mark WD4NYL & Teresa KQ4JC we wish you a very Merry Christmas! 73 and take care. Mark WD4NYL Editor ALERT NEWSLETTER www.freewebs.com/weatherlynx/

Hi everyone, I hope this finds you well, as you prepare for the upcoming Hobgoblin attack which will occur this Friday. There are a couple of scheduling notes that you should be aware of. The first one being that due to Veteran’s Day, this month’s ALERT meeting has been moved up one day to Monday November 10. There will be a Board of Directors meeting preceding this regular meeting. Also, ALERT will conduct a training session for Operational Members on Saturday November 15 around noon. Do understand that this is not a Skywarn or Stormspotter class. It is training to familiarize our members with the equipment at K4NWS in preparation for the fall severe weather season. We have new radios for 2 meters, 440 & 220 MHz, have had computer upgrades and have new monitors in our cubicle as well. Instead of having 3 small monitors we now have 2 large ones that are 22 or 24 inches wide. Please make plans to attend. As the time to learn to operate the equipment is BEFORE a severe weather episode, not during “the heat of battle”, of a tornado outbreak. I hope to see you there. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Useful iPhone Apps For Ham Radio, Emergency Preparedness and Other Applications (Thanks to Roger KK4UDU) Repeater Book Free Amateur Radio Repeater frequencies, PL Tones, and offsets – based on a distance from your current location. Settings can be adjusted for difference bands, modes, distance, etc. Echo Link Free Allows Ham radio operations for iPhone. Adobe Reader Free Allows iPhone to store, recall, read, and mark-up PDF files on the device. When used with iTunes on a PC, it can manually move PDF’s to and from the iPhone. Smart Office 2 $9.99 Can allow iPhone to create and modify Microsoft Excel, Word, and Power Point files. Uses iTunes to move documents between PC and iPhone. Sketch Pad Free Used to create sketches on iPhone and can be exported to PC. My Radar Free Quick easy weather radar data on iPhone, based on current location. Can zoom/pan the data. WunderMap Free Weather Underground’s iPhone App. (Link to NWSBMX) Free National Weather Service link “stored as an icon”. Red Cross – First Aid Free This is a “Dual Purpose” app. It functions as a step by step guide in a first aid emergency and it is a training guide is there is not an emergency. Red Cross – Tornado Free App to have weather warnings reported to your iPhone. Using current location as well as allowing you to monitor any other county. (Does not work on polygon data). Red Cross – Hurricane Free App to have Hurricane warnings reported to your iPhone. Using current location as well as allowing you to monitor any other county. (Does not work on polygon data). Red Cross – Earthquake Free App to have earthquakes warnings reported to your iPhone. Using current location as well as allowing you to monitor any other county. (Does not work on polygon data). Red Cross – Wildfire Free App to have wildfire warnings reported to your iPhone. Using current location as well as allowing you to monitor any other county. (Does not work on polygon data). VisionLink Free This started out as Red Cross – “Shelters” It appears to have been “taken over” by VisionLink Red Cross – Flood Free App to have flood warnings reported to your iPhone. Using current location as well as allowing you to monitor any other county. (Does not work on polygon data). iTrage Free Very similar to a Physicians Desk Reference. Also has locations of nearest hospital, clinic, etc. to your current location. Waze Free Navigation program which uses a “social Media” approach to warn of traffic related issues. Google Earth Free Access satellite images. What Knot Free Handbook of what knots to use and how to tie them. SAS Survival Guide Free The British SAS Survival Handbook by John “Lofty” Wiseman Take Ten Free Colombia Sports check list for various outdoor activities. Flight Aware Free Track private and commercial flights and airport information by the FAA airport abbreviations. Friend Finder Free “Big Brother” tracking app. Lets you share your location with other people. iTalk Free Voice recording app. Used to record notes and then have the program transpose them into a Word document and then use iTunes to copy to the PC. Angle Meter Free App to get an angle of the object on the screen. (Can be used to get the takeoff angle of an antenna). Zello Free Multi person push-to-talk app. Editor’s Note: One fun app that Teresa introduced me to is “Tap-Tap-See”. Using the built in accessibility functions of the phone, namely the “voice over” function, using this app you can point the camera at an object, take the picture and the phone will tell you what you are targeting. Such as “large yellow cat on chair”. This is a useful function as well as being just plain fun to tinker with. These apps may be obtained via the “App Store” icon on your iPhone. …………………………………………………………………………………………….. Mark’s Almanac With the arrival of November we enter our second tornado season. Alabama and the Southeast are “blessed” by being the only area on Earth having two tornado seasons. And, the cause of the second season is the same as the spring season – clashes of cold and warm air masses. The cold air of winter is invading and trying to push the warmth of the summer back into the sea, which is the same process of springtime, just in reverse. This second season is often more destructive than the spring season. So beware of a warm & muggy November day. Especially one with a south wind, as something may really be “in the air”. The Hurricane threat greatly diminishes, with hurricane activity occurring mainly in the open Atlantic, threatening the Eastern Seaboard, but usually veering off into sea as cold fronts off the East Coast deflect them. Hurricanes can still form in the Caribbean, which usually visit the Yucatan, but can enter the Gulf. Hurricane season ends November 30. The blooms of summer have faded, but you may find yourself still sneezing, due to ragweed and mold. Mold is a fall allergy trigger. You may think of mold growing in your basement or bathroom – damp areas in the house – but mold spores also love wet spots outside. Piles of damp leaves are ideal breeding grounds for mold. Oh, and did I mention dust mites? While they are common during the humid summer months, they can get stirred into the air the first time you turn on your heat in the fall. Dust mites can trigger sneezes, wheezes, and runny noses. November welcomes the peak of fall colors. For Birmingham the peak occurs around November 15, but the date can vary depending on your elevation & latitude. Indian Summer and Squaw Winter continue to battle it out, but the cool or cold weather will eventually win, with the first average frost being on November 11. The usual fall effects occur in North America with Canada’s Hudson Bay becoming unnavigable due to pack ice & icebergs. Navigation in the Great Lakes becomes perilous due to storms bringing the “Gales Of November” made famous in the Gordon Lightfoot song “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald”. And, don’t be surprised if you hear ducks overhead & see wedges of Canadian geese heading south for the winter. And if you see strange birds appearing in your front yard, remember that for 336 species of birds Alabama IS south for the winter. Looking skyward, Mercury is low above the eastern horizon in mid-dawn. This will be it’s best morning appearance of 2014. It is best viewed about an hour before sunrise. Venus is hidden in the glare of the Sun. Mars is low in the southwest as twilight fades into darkness. Giant Jupiter rises in the east-northeast around 1 AM and shines brightly at the Cancer-Leo border in the east. By dawn it shines brightly high in the southeast. Saturn is sinking away into the sunset, just above the west-southwest horizon. Uranus is high in the southeast in Pisces in early evening. Neptune is high in the South in Aquarius also in early evening. Full Moon will occur at 4:23 PM CST November 6. November’s Full Moon is called “Beaver Moon” in Native American folklore, because this was the time of year to set the beaver traps before the swamps and rivers froze. It has also been known as the Frosty Moon. The Moon will disappear from view as New Moon occurs on November 22 at 6:32 AM CST. The annual Leonid meteor shower occurs from November 10 – 21 and peaks on the night of November 17/18. Though the Leonids is an “average shower”, producing only an average of 15 meteors per hour, they are well known for producing bright meteors and fireballs. This shower is also unique in that it has a cyclonic peak about every 33 years where hundreds of meteors per hour can be seen. That last of these occurred in 2001. The Leonids are produced by dust grains left behind by comet Tempel-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1865. Its productivity varies per year, but it can deposit 12 to 13 tons of particles across the planet. Which is why having an atmosphere to shield us is such a nifty thing. 1763 planets have been confirmed beyond our star system as of October 15, 2014. Finally, don’t forget to set your clocks back one hour Sunday Morning November 2nd, as Daylight Savings Time ends. ………………………………………………………………………………………. This month’s meeting will be on November 10 at 7PM at the National Weather Service Forecast office at the Shelby County Airport. Now if for some reason you cannot attend the meeting in person, you can still participate via telephone. The teleconference number is 1-877-951-0997 & and the participant code is 741083. I hope to see you there. Until then, 73 and take care. Mark WD4NYL Editor ALERT NEWSLETTER www.freewebs.com/weatherlynx/

Hi everyone and welcome to the October ALERT Newsletter. Fall has arrived and with it we can look forward to the changing of the fall leaves, the occasional nip in the air, and the Hobgoblins that will visit us at the end of the month. October is a fun time of the year, being not to hot and not to cold – the “Goldilocks” of seasons. It is a time to enjoy fall football, baseball playoffs and the last outdoor adventures of the year. Here is hoping that you enjoy the days that this season brings, and the pretty weather October brings. Letting you rest before the storms of Fall. ………………………………………………………………………………………. Free Weather Stations!!! Would you like a free weather station? How about a whole network of them? Well you are in luck; allow me to introduce you to the realm of Automated Weather and Surface Observation systems. These include AWOS, ASOS, AWSS and ATIS stations. Let’s look at them one by one. Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) – AWOS stations are operate Continue reading →