BELLBROOK — The Miami Valley is under a Storm Tracking Alert as severe weather is expected in the region Sunday.
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News Center 7′s Taylor Robertson spoke with Skywarn Saturday about some of the technology they use to track severe weather.
Skywarn was at the American Radio Relay League’s annual Field Day Saturday in Beavercreek Township.
It brought together thousands of radio amateurs in the United States and Canada.
Robertson said the timing was perfect ahead of the possibility of strong to severe storms late Sunday afternoon into the early evening.
Don Parker, the Coordinator of Skywarn, said he was already on the phone with some of his net operators Saturday to make sure they are ready for Sunday.
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“We cover 15-plus counties and coverage, and each individual county has their own weather net, and they activate once we activate our system,” he said. “They take reports and from weather spotters, then relay that to us, we filter the information and then send it directly down to the National Weather Service in Wilmington.”
He told Robertson the prime example of what Skywarn does was shown during the 2019 Memorial Day Tornadoes.
“I was taking tornado reports from weather spotters, which are ham radio operators, and that was being relayed to the national weather service which inputs it out to the local meteorologists,” said Parker.
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Ray Hitt is the current president of the Bellbrook Amateur Radio Club (BARC). He explained how important field day was.
“The purpose would be to talk to other similar stations across North America and even the world who are also operating without power with generators or solar panels to simulate what would happen if we had a catastrophic event with no power for an extended period of time,” he told Robertson. “We could operate for quite a while without power at all.”
He also says they have amateur radio operators in all counties that report to the National Weather Service.
They then collect the reports and decide if there is a storm coming.
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“We can report what we see from where we’re at so there’s a whole network of amateur radio operators, watching the storm,” said Hitt. “They’ve been trained, they go to training annually to know what the storms are, what sorts of clouds to be concerned about, and which ones are not to be concerned about.”
Robertson says the National Weather Service then activates a warning and begins collecting raw data.
“Once there is a storm, we know where it is,” he said. “They give their location and then we can track it.”
To make sure you stay updated with the weather on Sunday, download the WHIO Weather app. For more information, visit this website.
News Center 7 will provide updates on the weather throughout the day Sunday.
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