By Bob Cox, from Star-Telegram
Even in the age of high-powered Doppler radar, instant communications and the Internet, the National Weather Service and local safety officials still rely heavily on old methods for accurate observations and emergency communications.
Volunteer amateur — or ham — radio operators still play a primary role in providing on-site information about tornadoes and storm conditions to weather forecasters and letting emergency responders know what’s going on.
“There’s nothing like ground troops,” said Keith Wells, assistant coordinator with the Tarrant County Office of Emergency Management, who was helping the National Weather Service on Saturday at the annual Skywarn storm spotter training session at Texas Christian University.
“One of the most important things we do all year is train the spotters,” Wells said. “When you have a trained observer on the ground at Bryant Irvin Road reporting golf-ball-sized hail or a funnel cloud, that really tells a meteorologist what’s going on.”
More than 400 people showed up for the training, most already members of Tarrant County RACES (Radio Amateurs in Civil Emergency Service). The volunteers are willing to fire up their radios and vehicles and often head out looking for storm action to provide instant observations to the weather service.
It’s a service that amateur radio operators have provided locally since the early 1970s.
Technology such as Doppler radar has given forecasters more tools, but it’s the spotters’ eyes that give meteorologists confirmation that a radar screen cannot.
A lot of radar warnings don’t actually develop into a tornado. Armed with an eyewitness account, the weather service can determine whether to issue a warning.
“If you have some trained spotters watching, the forecasters love it,” said Claude Whitley Jr., who has been storm-spotting or managing the radio conversations at the weather service offices since the earliest days of the program.
The “old” technology of ham radios is still a huge advantage when bad weather strikes. Storms that knock down telephone lines and cellphone towers don’t knock out the many technically proficient and creative radio operators who have backup generators and batteries and can jury-rig antennas and wires.
“We know how to make things work. That’s something we learned in amateur radio,” Whitley said.
Ham radio operators provided most of the communications into and out of southern Louisiana in the days after Hurricane Katrina.
Ron McClanahan, an amputee ham radio operator who lives in the Diamond Hill neighborhood of Fort Worth, has several large batteries available to power his equipment and also old batteries from his electric wheelchair that he can tap into.
“I can stay on the air for days if I have to,” he says.
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