The WX5FWD SKYWARN™ team are volunteer radio operator liaisons for the Fort Worth National Weather Service (NWS) North Texas SKYWARN™ Spotters. During SKYWARN events, you are reporting information to our team and the NWS warning forecasters. Three goals of a storm spotter are to safely observe, identify and report conditions.

Weather spotters provide what's called "ground truth" to the National Weather Service and emergency weather management. Spotters are needed because, while radar is very good at helping the National Weather Service see what's going on in the upper atmosphere, it's unable to detect what's actually happening on the ground because of the curvature of the Earth. Knowing the "ground truth" about a weather event from the location can be the deciding factor to issue a warning.

NWS UPDATE: Strong Winds, Storms and Winter Weather Potential

Submitted by wd5m on Thu, 2018-12-13 14:14
Concern

From: National Weather Service, Fort Worth
Date: Thursday, 13 December 2018 10:05 CDT

Very windy. Strong to severe thunderstorms will be possible this afternoon East of I-45. Rain will mix with or change to wet snow late this afternoon and evening west of I-35/I-35W. The wintry precipitation may continue into Friday morning and reach areas along the I-35 corridor. While computer models are in good agreement on the forecast presented below, this is a dynamic system which means adjustments to the forecast may occur quickly during the day through Friday morning.

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NWS Special Event 2018 SKYWARN® Recognition Day

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2018-11-23 09:51
NWS Special EventNWS Special Event

2018 SKYWARN® Recognition Day

Fort Worth NWS CWA The 2018 SKYWARN® Recognition Day event is from Friday evening, November 30th 18:00 (6PM) CST until Saturday December 1st 18:00 (6PM) CST. Or in UTC time December 1, 2018, from 00:00 to 24:00 UTC.

SKYWARN™ Recognition Day was developed in 1999 by the National Weather Service (NWS) and the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). It celebrates the contributions that volunteer SKYWARN™ radio operators make to the National Weather Service. During the day SKYWARN™ operators visit NWS offices and contact other radio operators across the world.

National information regarding SKYWARN Recognition Day is published at www.weather.gov/crh/skywarnrecognition and the ARRL. David McAnally (WD5M), with the WX5FWD Radio Desk Team, is the local SKYWARN Recognition day coordinator for the Fort Worth NWS WFO.

North Texas spotters are encouraged to participate in SKYWARN™ Recognition Day, and log radio contacts with NWS offices and SKYWARN™ spotter groups. We hope to share memories and recognize all spotters who provide vital information to forecasters for warnings.

SKYWARN volunteers may visit the Fort Worth Weather Forecast Office on Saturday December 1st. Visitors must RSVP before Friday, November 30th via wx5fwd.org/RSVP, or send email to SRD@wx5fwd.org. We will accommodate three groups of visitors on an hourly schedule, 15 to 20 people at a time. The two groups from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM will be provided a light lunch. Parking and building resources are limited. Please RSVP including your name, email address, the hour you expect to visit starting at 11:30 AM, call sign (not required), and county. More details will be provided to visitors via email.

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2018 ARRL Field Day is June 23-24

Submitted by wd5m on Wed, 2018-06-20 14:23

The Fort Worth NWS SKYWARN Radio Desk team will be active on several bands and modes during Field Day, Saturday-Sunday, June 23-24, from the Fort Worth National Weather Service Forecast Office. Our special event call sign is W5T. We hope to contact you, and add your call sign and information to our log. We'll publish the bands, frequencies, and other information periodically during the event on the wx5fwd.org web site and social media WX5FWD Twitter account and FaceBook.

ARRL Field Day is the most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June, more than 40,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.

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Facebook support for API postings by Weather Message may end August 1, 2018

Submitted by wd5m on Sat, 2018-04-28 08:49

Periodically, when the embedded "SPOTTER INFORMATION STATEMENT" section references "spotter activation" we have published the NWS Hazardous Weather Outlook (HWO) product on Facebook, including links to the full text and other related information. We do this hoping to provide wider visibility to spotters, and others, that may need to check their severe weather forecasts plans. We automated this HWO posting using the Weather Message software package.

Recently, Facebook posted a notice on their blog about changes to their API that will prevent Weather Message, and similar software, from publishing messages on Facebook. This change by Facebook is schedule to occur August 1, 2018.

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2017 SKYWARN Recognition Day QSL Log

Submitted by wd5m on Sun, 2017-12-10 12:02
QSL

Thank you! Everyone who participates in SKYWARN storm spotting makes SKYWARN Recognition Day a wonderful event. We hope everyone enjoyed themselves.

The W5W/WX5FWD station logged 280 contacts in total.

We have created a log of contacts with a link to display a QSL card for printing. Click on the Read More to display the QSL Log page.

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