Recently while looking on non-sociable media I caught a reference to a technuckle paper about IWT and communications. I don’t normally read that stuff anymore; 35 plus years in the power industry dealing with engineering, design and construction processes will cure any itch you have to read something like that for pleasure. But I took the bait as it was written by some folks I have come to know at the National Weather Service (NWS). It was a study on how the NWS Integrated Warning Team (IWT) functions and how well communication occurs internally. The study focused on events of a particular day in 2013 when there was a rash of bad weather in the Montague, Granbury and Cleburne areas. As spotters we are part of that team, which also for this study included groups such as the NWS, Emergency management community, Media and the Public we all serve. Kind of like a family, we don’t always see things the same, think everyone is paying attention to ME and don’t always listen to each other.

It was drudgery. While I understood the concepts and the overall flow, reading tech stuff, diagraphs, the complex math and analysis is just not fun anymore. But I did learn a couple of reinforcing concepts to share with our ARES operators. As you can guess we are an integral part of the communication flow. We also need to be accurate in our reports and we share in the overall responsibility for accurate warning.

We are part of the flow as many times our ground truth reports form a key component for analysis of other information the NWS has access to. They may suspect something is up but our reports are the facts that prove out the math they are dealing with. If a tree is forecast to fall in the forest and no one knows exactly which one, but the math says one’s probably gonna fall today, we provide that ground truth when we report that we heard the first cracking of the trunk and see the swaying top in the deep woods.

Our reports need to be accurate. We need to report what we saw, where it was and when it occurred. Again, the NWS folk are dealing with a dynamic environment and the changes all mean something as they see the life of the storm ebb and flow.

Because of the need to report ground truth to establish what is really happening in the storm and we are accurate in the reporting, we share in the responsibility for good warnings. We do our best to report real, not imposter funnels, no scary looking clouds and confirm among ourselves of the events unfolding before us.

I came away with a better understanding of the dynamics of our IWT family, and yes we all have that cousin, but together, you and the rest of the IWT do pretty darn good job in Grayson county, thank you.

Now for some info about our friends in Fannin County. It came up the other night in a training session that we might not have up-to-date info on Fannin county’s repeaters and tones… I emailed Jeff KX5JSJ, the Fannin Co EC, and here is his info on the repeaters they might be using.

“Here is the info I have
147.200 +   6 Mhz     100.0 tone
145.470 –   6 Mhz     100.0 tone
443.750 +   5 Mhz     100.0 tone

We are running WIRES on all three repeaters as well. We have Echolink and IRLP.”

That all I have for now, see you down the line,

73
Rick
K5ECX