National Night Out is an annual community-building event that brings together local law enforcement agencies, other first responders, and neighborhoods for a night of fun and camaraderie.
ALERT is planning to have a presence Sylvan Springs event at the Sylvan Springs Community Center the evening of October 4 at 5:30pm.
This is a free event, family friendly, and you get to see the “cool stuff” that will be on site at the community center.
ALERT’s Objectives / Scope for this event are:
1. Participate as a Weather Ready Nation Ambassador, promoting weather preparedness in our community.
2. Promote Skywarn Storm Spotter Training.
3. Promote Amateur Radio, especially to existing storm spotters who might not have a way to contact NWS when other communications might fail.
4. Make friends in our community and have some fun!
At the ALERT table there will be a candy bowl, crayons for kids and coloring items for the kids, from NWS materials.
Middle school age kids get a book and smaller kids get coloring sheets.
Ronnie King’s Hambulance will be there and is providing support for marketing to the public and will have a looping presentation display.
Expect more information on the ALERT email loop and on ALERT’s Facebook page.
Hope to see you there!
Friday, December 3rd @ 6PM Central Time (Dec 4 0000z to 2400z), Skywarn Recognition Day kicks off, and continues for the next 24 hours.
The National Weather Service office in Birmingham is represented in Skywarn Recognition Day by ALERT (The Alabama Emergency Response Team) as the callsign K4NWS.
Skywarn Recognition Day is an event celebrates the contribution of SKYWARN volunteers to the NWS’s mission. More information about the event, including Operating Procedures for the contest, Participating Offices, Echolink Info/IRLP info, all can be found at the event link: https://www.weather.gov/crh/skywarnrecognition
There is also a registration form for the event, this is used so NWS can associate your operation with a specific NWS office and you will be given an SRD number used in the contact exchange between participants, the form can also be found at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfgnt7GpNxaLdtlsPxuVgyrnUIgpGfLnKHycXstQk996w6-HQ/viewform?usp=sf_link
To contact us via Amateur Radio:
HF: 10,17,15,20 Meters
2M FM 146.880 (BARC), 147.320 and 146.980 (SCARC)
220 FM 224.500
70cm FM 444.700
DMR Talk Group 31013 which is available on all DMR repeaters in the Birmingham area but is also available on various repeaters in the BMX county warning area.
D-Star: REF058B or REF090C/XRF334C
AllStar: 48168
EchoLink: K4NWS-L (155003)
IRLP Experimental Reflector: 0091
WinLink: K4NWS (at) winlink (dot) org
In 2020 and in response to COVID, SRD was expanded outside of Amateur Radio to include all Skywarn Storm spotters.
Here are some ways to contact our station that are not Amateur Radio:
Zello: https://zello.com/channels/k/duTMd
Telegram: http://t.me/K4NWS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/K4NWS/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/K4NWS
MeWe: https://mewe.com/join/alert
Our participation in SRD in previous years can be found here:
http://alert-alabama.org/SRD/index.htm
Good day ALERT friends, ham radio, Skywarn Spotters!
If you’ve noticed, we’ve taken down our info on BMXSpotterChat, which was served to ALERT by Weather.IM for a number of years. Recently, there was a spammer/bad actor, who prompted the administrator of the server to set every chat room to read-only. Unfortunately, that impacts ALERT, thus we have been testing a new solution, to resolve this issue.
The proposed solution is able to support Skywarn spotters and ALERT membership, as well as separate/private areas, and much more. An email with full details was sent to everyone in our membership/newsletter list.
Calls to Action:
If you haven’t had a chance to attend a meeting in a while, this would be a good one to join, coming up on February 9, 2021, to be introduced to the proposed solution (and voting members, if there’s a vote/motion on the floor).
If you aren’t on our monthly mailing list, or need an invite to the meeting, kick us a message on Facebook, or via email: feedback at alert-alabama dot org. (Please allow up to 48 hours for reply.)
See you at the upcoming virtual meeting!
Good evening!
For those of you that may not know me, I am John De Block, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at NWS Birmingham. Many of you are on this list as a result of attending a SKYWARN Storm Spotter Training class in the last year, given by one of our outstanding staff here at the office.
During our Storm Spotter Training classes, you may or may not have heard about the relationship the NWS has with amateur radio operators. Back in the day before the advent of cellphones, personal devices, and the internet, the only way for a storm spotter in a remote or distant location to communicate in near real time with the NWS by radio. The connection between storm spotting and amateur radio was born out of necessity, yet it continues to this day. Of course since that time, we have added all those modern communications tools to the arsenal of the SKYWARN Storm Spotter, and have actually mixed the “old” with the “new” in amateur radio itself, with digital radios, and amateur radio over the internet, from satellite…it’s truly amazing.
Regardless of HOW a SKYWARN trained Storm Spotter chooses to communicate with the NWS, storm spotters remain the eyes and ears, the “boots on the ground” near a distant storm that can relate information to the NWS warning forecasters that isn’t available from any other source. To show our appreciation for all of you who relay that critical information to the NWS, we created “SKYWARN Recognition Day” (SRD) in 1999, and is observed annually on the first Saturday (Zulu or UTC time, otherwise known as Greenwich Mean Time). In Alabama, that runs from 6PM Friday through 6PM Saturday.
In the past, the primary way that SRD was observed was by hosting local Amateur Radio operating groups at the local NWS office, and trying to make contact with as many other participating Amateur Radio operators as possible during that 24 hour timeframe. Of course and unfortunately, 2020 has caused us to have to retool and come up with new ways to observe SRD. Amateur Radio operators will still conduct their operations, but it will be from remote locations away from the NWS office. But 2020 also inspired us to offer a new twist on SRD, and that is the involvement of other SKYWARN Storm Spotters through social media and other means.
You can find out all the information you need about the nationally scheduled activities on SRD 2020 (#skywarn20), at the SRD Webpage, https://www.weather.gov/crh/skywarnrecognition, and/or at the SRD Facebook Page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/skywarnrecognitionday (you will have to request to join the private group). There are a number of Facebook Live events scheduled for the 24 hour period, including topics such as a tour of the storm prediction center, and the weather year in review.
In addition to those nationally run events, NWS Birmingham will be offering 3 live events for you to participate in!
Friday, 7-7:30PM – Google Meet from the NWS office, The Importance of SKYWARN Storm Spotters and Introduction to Amateur Radio Storm Spotting Operations
Saturday Morning (approx) 5:30AM – 6:10AM – @NWSBirmingham Facebook Live balloon launch
Saturday Morning 7-7:30AM – Google Meet from NWS Birmingham – SRD2020 Coffee at NWS Skywarn Storm Spotter Open Forum
Here is the link for the Google Meet sessions we will be hosting: https://meet.google.com/kfz-tizn-xjd
I know this is short notice, but as with all of 2020, we’re more or less trying to make do on a day to day basis as best we can. We hope you have the opportunity to participate in some way with SRD 2020, and would love to “see” you in one of our Google Meets that we are offering, and hope you can watch our live balloon launch.
And…let me be the first to say THANK YOU to all our SKYWARN Storm Spotters!
John
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