Serving for more than thirty years, 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.

WX5FWD Radio Desk Modernization Project

Submitted by wd5m on Wed, 2025-01-29 19:50

We created a brief video to highlight our NWS Radio Desk Modernization Project.

How to Submit A Report, What We Need to Know

Submitted by wd5m on Thu, 2024-02-22 18:36

The NWS Spotter Training program provides the basic information spotters need to safely observe and report severe weather information. Below are links any spotter can reference.

NWS Fort Worth Spotter Cheat Sheet
www.weather.gov/media/fwd/skywarn/Spotter%20Handout%202022.pdf

How to Submit A Report to NWS Fort Worth, What We Need to Know, What to Report (Our Wishlist)

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Information for Storm Spotters

Submitted by wd5m on Sun, 2021-12-19 20:16
SKYWARN Storm Spotters should attend the annual training sessions provided by National Weather Service (NWS). Those sessions give spotters the basic information they need to safely and effectively provide severe weather reports. You are considered a trained spotter by attending a training session. Attending annually also gives you updates on the latest training information. Safety is the primary concern of the training. If you missed the scheduled training sessions, there is spotter reference material and training on the Internet. This material is useful to the trained spotter as well.
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Using Amateur Radio For Storm Spotters

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2021-11-26 20:22
radiodesk

The Storm Spotters Checklist handout provided by the National Weather Service (NWS) includes a sub-section titled "SKYWARN Reporting Methods" www.weather.gov/fwd/skywarn-report. "Amateur Radio: WX5FWD" is at the top of the list.

From time to time we are asked to provide details about using amateur radio for storm spotter activity such as methods,frequencies, repeaters, or local storm spotter groups. The WX5FWD.org web site attempts to provide some of this information on various pages. Hopefully, this brief page will help organize and reference this information.

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SKYWARN® Radio Network Conference Guidelines

Submitted by wd5m on Fri, 2021-11-26 20:21

Emergency traffic, tornado activity or weather that is an imminent threat to life and/or property has top priority.

This guideline applies to the Fort Worth NWS SKYWARN® Radio Desk EchoLink and Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) conference during SKYWARN® weather events. See the RoIP page for other details on connecting to the conference. See "How to Submit A Report to NWS Fort Worth" for additional sotter reporting information.

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