ALERT NEWSLETTER – February 2016

Published 02/02/2016 | By KV4S

Hi Everyone

It is practically certain that our resident groundhog Birmingham Bill will not see his shadow this Groundhog Day. If true, and if the folklore were true, then we would have an early spring.

Also, we would have the storms of that early spring.

Are you ready for the storms of spring and for the callouts that will come?

There will be, barring unforeseen circumstances, an ALERT training session Saturday February 20 from noon till 2 PM. This will be an excellent chance to train or refresh your training before the spring severe weather season begins.

Now is also the time to take the time to review your personal emergency preparedness plans and to brush up on your skills. Don’t wait until the sirens sound. For by then it may be too late.

In preparing, you should ask yourselves these questions:

Is my family shelter (and everyone should have one) ready?
Is my equipment, both antennae & radios working?
Are the batteries charged?
Are my communications channels still functional? Including RF, Internet & telephone resources.
Can I reliably receive weather watches and warnings?

Are you prepared both at home and at work?

Remember, keeping yourself and your family alive and intact during and after the storms is your number one priority.

Stay safe.

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Potent PDF’s & Other Ready Resources

The primary key to emergency preparedness, regardless of the type of emergency is education.
It would not be inappropriate to quote Hosea 6:4 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
The less you know, the more vulnerable you are. Likewise the more you know, the less vulnerable you are. The more you learn, the more mental tools you have at your disposal, and the better prepared you will be to act and react to rapidly changing emergency scenarios.

The following are resources, which deal with a wide range of scenarios, I have found useful.

Read them & learn them and you will be better suited to help yourselves, your families and your community.

WEATHER RELATED RESOURCES

First we will present storm spotter courses. The training material is available online, but, I strongly recommend you attend the classes, whether in person or one of the online presentations. Books are good. I eat them up, but nothing beats the “live performance”.

Basic Stormspotter Guide PDF – http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/pah/pdf/basicspotterguide.pdf

Basic Stormspotter Presentation by John De Block PDF- http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/bmx/outreach/skywarn/WebBasicSpotter2009.pdf

Advanced Stormspotter Guide PDF – http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/fwd/pdf/broch_adv_spotter.pdf

Graduate Stormspotter Presentation by Scott Unger – PDF – http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/bmx/outreach/skywarn/GraduateSpotterPresentation.pdf

Weather Spotter’s Field Guide http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/Skywarn/SpotterGuide-2011.pdf

Role Of The Skywarn Spotter https://www.meted.ucar.edu/training_module.php?id=817#.VrAErcvnbIU

Skywarn Spotter Convective Basics
https://www.meted.ucar.edu/training_module.php?id=816#.VrAFFcvnbIU

NWS Spotter Training Presentation Power Point Presentation

“Click on the link and choose to Open the Zip file as it’s downloaded to your computer.
Once the download is complete, extract to a location of your choosing, e.g. “My Documents”.
A new subdirectory will be made in the location you specified, e.g. C:My DocumentsNWS_Spotter_Training.
Within this new directory, use Internet Explorer to Open NWS_Spotter_Training.htm and then view the presentation.”

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/dmx/NWS_Spotter_Training.zip

NWS Preparedness & Storm Spotter Information Catalog
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/fwd/?n=skywarn

Large Minicourse In Meteorology
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/

GENERAL DISASTER PREPARDNESS COURSES & BOOKS

Our first item may, at one time, have been out of place in a disaster preparedness discussion, however in the 2016 world in which we live, it is very appropriate.

The first course is FEMA’s course IS-907: “Active Shooter: What You Can Do” http://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-907

This is the current training for what to do if you find yourself in a mass shooting incident.

It is somewhat “dated” in that focuses more on workplace violence than on terrorist activity.
And, even if it did focus on terrorist activity, the aims and motives of the current generation of terrorists is different than those of the past.

Terrorists of the past would target “symbolic” targets, namely military, governmental and economic targets. In some cases, such as the Irish Republican Army, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, they justified their actions on a desire to establish independence or a homeland.

Others would strike because of hatred of the west, Israel, and especially the United States for our once strong support of Israel and our hindering terrorist expansion in the region.

ISIS is different. While they want to establish a nation for an operations base, their ideology is primarily based on the idea that by acting as they are acting they will usher in an Apocalyptic Age, which will lead to their version of Armageddon. They believe that the few surviving remnants of humanity from that battle will be followers of ISIS ideology.

They have a very skillful multimedia recruitment campaign which is working, capturing young imaginations, and capitalizing on the fact that the hardest thing to defeat is an idea.

All that said, regardless of whether a mass shooting incident is triggered by terrorists, disgruntled workers and some random loon, IS-907 should be required reading.

People should not walk in fear, but, should be aware of what is going on, both nationally and in their immediate surroundings, and not walk around in a daze.

Recently I saw a lady walking through a Walmart parking lot happily texting away, oblivious to everything and walking smack into the middle of a parked Cadillac. She suddenly looked up and looked amazed that a car could suddenly materialize out of nowhere, moved five feet left, and resumed walking and texting.

Terrorists aside, this, and tuning out the world with earbuds is making oneself a muggers dream.

IS-907, is from the same site where you take the FEMA ICS & NIMS courses:

http://www.training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-100.b Introduction the Incident Command System

http://www.training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-200.b ICS For Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents

http://www.training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-700.a National Incident Management System, an Introduction

http://www.training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-800.b National Response Framework, An Introduction.

These FEMA Incident Command System courses are not required for ALERT members, since ALERT does not use the Incident Command System.

Why not, you may ask?

Our served agency, the National Weather Service, and its parent organization NOAA does not utilize it nor require its use, so we follow their lead. Plus, in my opinion, the ICS structure is cumbersome for small organizations and two man callouts.

If the day should come that we were to implement this system, the probable structure would be as follows:

INCIDENT COMMANDER:

The senior NWS Official on scene, i.e. Meteorologist In Charge, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, Lead Forecaster or whoever they designated as Incident Commander.

ALERT’s operations would fall under the Logistics Section of the NWS ICS.

The ICS is still worth being familiar with, however for use with ARES, EMA and other operations and to have a broader knowledge of how and why things are done as they are done.

Another worthwhile course is the CERT Course “Introduction To Community Emergency Response Teams”

http://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-317 and Appendix http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/downloads/training/CERTPMAppendix1-APDF.zip

This is the same material you receive when local CERT classes are held. However, if you actually intend to be a CERT responder you SHOULD & MUST attend a CERT class to be certified and to lessen the likelihood of getting yourself killed in the field.

If those interest you, IS-22 Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is22.asp will be good for you also.

For good measure here are the old Civil Defense Manuals from the “Good Old Days”:

H-14 In time of EMERGENCY a citizen’s handbook on … Nuclear Attack … Natural Disasters (1968)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15158/15158-h/15158-h.htm

SM-3-11 Personal And Family Survival (1966) http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ina22/+301/$301-text-Personal_and_Family_Survival.html

The ARES ARECC books and courses are goldmines of information. Order all three books, read them and read them again. When a local course is offered, take it. http://www.arrl.org/courses-training.

I hope you find these resources useful, will read them and then read them again.

Remember that knowledge is a perishable commodity, so you want to stay fresh in your preparations.

As it is said “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready” – Dianna ‘Miss D’ Williams

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Mark’s Almanac

February, or Februarius, as the Romans called it is named after the Latin term februum, which means “purification”. Ancient Rome celebrated the Februa purification ritual on February 15, which was Full Moon on the old lunar based Latin calendar.

February was not originally included in the Roman calendar, which began in March, but was added, along with January by Numa Pompilius around 713 BC, and until 450 BC was considered the last month of the year.

February was originally 29 days long, but one day was taken and added to August, so the that Emperor Augustus’s month would be equal to Julius Caesar’s month of July. Now only Leap Year has 29 days, the next of which will occur in 2016.

In the Southern Hemisphere February is the equivalent of August. But, for us, February is a cold month with more snow falling in February than in any other month.

Statistically speaking, there is a 70% chance of snow flurries, and a 57% chance of snow up to one inch. There is a 13% chance of over one inch, and a 3% chance of 4 inches or more.

There is hope on the horizon though, as the worst of winter weather is usually over by February 15.

Ground Hog Day is on February 2 & believers will watch Punxsutawney Phil and Birmingham Bill, to see if they saw their shadows.

Looking towards the sky, Mercury and Venus are low in the southeast. Look 40 to 60 minutes before sunrise.

Mercury will reach his greatest western elongation rising 25.6 degrees above the Sun. This is the best time to view Mercury, since it is at his highest point above the morning horizon. Look in the eastern sky just before sunrise.

Brilliant Venus, sometimes confused as a UFO, is easy to spot shining at magnitude -3.9. Look lower left of it for fainter Mercury.

To the upper right of Venus is Saturn shining much fainter at magnitude +0.5 in Ophiuchus.

Mars lies in Libra, shining at magnitude +1.0 high in the south in early dawn.

Jupiter, between Leo and Virgo, rises in the east around 9 PM and shines highest in the south at magnitude -2.3 around 3 AM.

Uranus shines high in the Southwest in Pisces at sunset at magnitude +5.8.

Neptune shines at magnitude +7.9 in Aquarius and is sinking low in the west after dark.

Planet Nine, if it exists, is shining dimly at a magnitude fainter than 22 and at an oblique 30 degree angle to the ecliptical plane of the solar system where the other eight planets orbit.

Planet Nine’s probable existence was announced on January 20 by Konstantin Batygin & Huntsville’s Mike Brown, of the California Institute of Technology. Brown’s team discovered dwarf planets Eris, Haumea and Makemake and he was the lead proponent of Pluto’s demotion. They cited computer modeling of gravitational effects on the strange orbits of objects near the edge of the solar system including probable dwarf planets Sedna, also discovered by Brown’s team, and 2012 VP133 which was discovered in 2014.

If Planet Nine does exist, it is a Neptune type world, 10 times the size of Earth, in an orbit 20 times distant form the sun as Neptune.

Personally, I think poor old Pluto is still #9 and this, if it does actually exist, should be #10, but, the International Astronomical Union which demoted the old boy in 2006 forgot to ask me.

So pooh…

An interesting article, for those who might be interested is “Hypothetical Planets” which deals with planets, moons and the Sun’s “companion star Nemisis”. All proposed or “discovered” through the years only to be “undiscovered” when better data became available. See: http://nineplanets.org/hypo.html

Elsewhere, 1935 planets beyond our solar system have now been confirmed as of January 21, per NASA’s Exoplanet Archive http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/

New Moon will occur at 8:39 AM on Monday, February 8, as the Moon will be located on the same side of the Earth as the Sun and will not be visible in the night sky.

Full Moon will occur Monday, February 22, 12:20 PM CST.

February’s Full Moon is “Full Snow Moon” in Native American folklore, since the heaviest snows usually fell at this time of year. Since the harsh weather made hunting difficult, some tribes called it “Full Hunger Moon”.

The February sky is alit with bright stars. With Orion the Hunter overhead, along with his faithful hunting dogs, Canis Major & Canis Minor, the Large & Lesser Dogs. In Canis Major is the blue star Sirius, The Dog Star, which 8.6 light years away, is the brightest star in the night sky.

February and March are the best times of the year for seeing the Zodiacal Light. In the evening away from city lights and after twilight has faded you might see a faint, roughly triangular, whitish glow near the sunset point. This is Zodiacal Light, which is formed by the sunlight reflecting off millions of minute particles of cosmic dust aligned with the Earth’s orbital plane.

Another sight, much more common is the Earth Shadow. At sunset, on very clear days, as the sun goes farther below the horizon, you will see what appears to be a layer of gray cloud rising along the eastern horizon. This is actually the silhouette of the earth’s shadow being cast against darkening sky, sometimes with a pinkish glow along the edge. It fades as twilight fades into darkness.

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The Birmingham Hamfest http://birminghamfest.org/ is now only five weeks away, March 4 & 5.
As mentioned in last month’s newsletter, this it will be a Friday & Saturday affair; instead of the Saturday Sunday dates of years past.

This month’s meeting will be on February 9 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.

ALERT NEWSLETTER – February 2016

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