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Alachua County SKYWARN

Watching the weather!

* AC-EMWIN PROJECT OVERVIEW - POWERPOINT PRESENTATION (08/21/2003)
A PowerPoint presentation on the AC-EMWIN Project was given at the regular meeting of the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society on the evening of August 21st. If you were not able to attend, and you would like to view the presentation, see here. There are two versions to choose from - PowerPoint (.PPT) and online HTML. Our thanks the the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society for allowing us to give the presentation.

* EMWIN PROJECT PROGRESS (07/18/2003)
The Alachua Co. EMWIN Project is proceding along - if but slowly. Project Request Form for satellite receiving dish installation upon the Dental Science Bldg. rooftop was approved and it is all that remains of the major subprojects to do. We just have to arrange a date to put it up, now. Was actually approved last month but bugs in the EMWIN software kept me involved in working with the author to correct them. In the process, also had a chance to suggest and have implemented numerous more user-friendly improvements to the software. We had some major roadblocks with SMTP Auth and POP Before SMTP with a number of local ISPs which seriously interfered with e-mailing and some paging. As well, had some issues with AFN and inability to FTP products to the EMWIN page on AFN. Unknown if due to AFN's disk space problems or to finite number of FTP ports available. Problem resolved by moving all products to the EMWIN machine, itself, and pointing to them from the pages on AFN. For now, it seems we have finally worked around all these problems and things appear to be working smoothly now on the EMWIN computer. NWS products are available on the EMWIN web page, an updated watch/warning map is available on the A.C. SKYWARN main page, text product e-mailing and paging services are now available to the public, and we are retransmitting NWS text and graphic products over the air on 163.325 MHz. At this time, all data is being pulled from off of the Internet; but once the satellite dish goes up, we will be pulling from GOES-12, with Internet then used only as a backup if the signal for whatever reason fails.

* LARGE HAIL IN ALACHUA COUNTY! (03/01/2003)
On the morning of March 1st, Al Pinson's home was deluged with so much hail that the ground at his home became white, and hail up to 3-inches fell, causing damage to his vehicles and property. More on the story here.

* BASIC SPOTTER TRAINING!!! (02/24/2003)
We just finalized plans for the next Basic Spotter Training Class! It will be held on Friday, April 4th. More information about that here!

* EMWIN TRANSMITTING STATION (02/07/03)
FDEM just dropped off all the necessary equipment needed to run an EMWIN transmitting station with us. Still awaiting a second delivery of the required coax. We're hoping that the station will be located atop the roof of the Dental Sciences wing of the J.H. Miller Health Sciences Center (across the street from Shands Hospital). We're in the process of working that out. Once operational, anyone with a scanner and a small "demodulator" device will be able to receive the EMWIN transmissions on their own home computer noticeably faster than is possible with Internet lists. The EMWIN system retransmits NWS weather products out on a frequency of 163.325 MHz at 1200 baud. We can customize which "products" (text bulletins, and perhaps even some images) are transmitted so that only those products relating to Alachua County will be sent. As WELL as being able to transmit the data, we can dupe it to personal e-mail, e-mail lists, to text pagers which use an e-mail address, and we can upload bulletins to our web site where people can click on the latest issued bulletin. For more information on this project, and it's status, please see the web page About the Alachua County EMWIN Transmitting Station.

* NEW WARNING COORDINATION METEOROLOGIST (WCM) AT NWS-JAX (02/07/03)
Fred Johnson has moved on to greener grasses with a new job in Kansas City working with the Aviation Weather Center. The new Warning Coordination Metorologist for NWS-JAX is now Al Sandrik. Congrats to both Fred and Al and we look forward to working with Al in the future.

* ADVANCED SPOTTER TRAINING CLASS TO BE HELD JULY 16TH (06/12/02)
The next Advanced Spotter Training Class will be held July 16th, 2002 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM at Alachua County Fire/Rescue Headquarters, 913 SE 5th Street, Gainesville. Instructor will be Fred Johnson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist from NWS-Jacksonville. Note that this is not being held at the same location as the recent Basic class (which was held at the Alachua Co. EOC Building). For a map to ACFR HQ, please see here.

* MARCH 27TH BASIC SPOTTER TRAINING CLASS A SUCCESS! (03/28/02)
The spotter training class was a great success, pulling in 42 people. The class was held at 7pm at the Alachua Co. EOC building located at 2621 SE Hawthorne Road (at the corner oe SE Hawthorne Rd. & SE 27th St.). The Instructor was again Fred Johnson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist from NWS-JAX. After the class, Dave Donnelly, Alachua Co. Emergency Manager with the Alachua Co. Office of Emergency Management, gave a tour of the EOC facilities. Our thanks to WUFT/TV-5 for the interviews and the publicity; also to The Gainesville Sun, WGFL, WOGX, WKTK, WSKY, GoGainesville.com, and all of the local Publix supermarkets for the publicity that they also provided us online, in articles, in radio spots, and on public bulletin boards.

The next class will be an Advanced, which is now in the process of being arranged with Fred Johnson. We'll advise everyone when we come up with a date, time, and location.

* A.C. SKYWARN WEB PAGE NOW HAS A MIRROR SITE (09/02/01)
Jim Carr/KC4MHH, of Fireline BBS Online, has graciously made space available on his server to allow the creation of a mirror site for the Alachua County SKYWARN Home Page. Now, if Alachua FreeNet goes down again, the page will still be accessible from the secondary server site. The secondary URL for the A.C. SKYWARN Home Page is http://www.fireline.org/skywarn. Definitely bookmark it, and label it as a "[mirror site]", so that if AFN goes down again in the future, you will have a secondary way in.

* GARS 146.820 REPEATER NOW BACK ON THE AIR (08/27/01)
The Gainesville Amateur Radio Society's repeater on 146.820 MHz is now back up and running with a new radio and repeater controller. The OUTPUT (not the input) is currently toned to 123.0. This doesn't do much good to actually limit any interference on the INPUT, but it CAN be used during band openings when multiple 82s can be heard, to allow your radio's squelch to open ONLY when the GARS 82 repeater pops up. All you have to do is turn on the PL feature on your transceiver, and tell it that 82 uses 123.0.

* ALERT LIST MOVES OVER TO YAHOOGROUPS (08/23/01)
On August 23rd, A.C. SKYWARN opened a list group account on YahooGroups. Over the next few days, the service was set up, and then current list members were automatically moved over to that group. Before the move, the list was actually a simple BCC list maintained on the Coordinator's home computer for free, out of his own time. However, when the Coordinator was not home, or otherwise unavailable, and the severe weather came, then no alerts would be sent out. Moving things to Yahoo allows assigning multiple people to send out the alerts if the Coordinator is not able to.

Current members will not have to do anything to resubscribe back into the list. It will occur automatically. If users then desire to unsubscribe, they now have the control to do so without having to ask permission from the moderator, if they wish.

While Yahoo incorporates a few anti-spam measures to try to prevent spam from getting into the list group, and while our own list is read-only (and moderators must approve everything before it gets sent back into the list, anyway), there is ONE downside. At the top of any e-mails sent to the list, a two or three-line ad gets added by Yahoo. But it's pretty small. If you can deal with that minor irritance, then you're good to go. But if you can't, it is easy to unsubscribe, and the instructions are at the bottom of all e-mails in the list. We'd hate to see people go, but we would understand if it really bothered you.

The move to Yahoo does offer certain additional "niceties." Online, at the list site, members will have access to a variety of new and interesting things. You can view the list group's mail right there in the MESSAGES section. You can upload/download files to the FILES section. You can access our DATABASE section (currently containing past Spotter Class Rosters, which may be sorted by any column just by clicking at the column name). You can upload/download photos to the PHOTOS section. If you have a weather-related photo that you think is interesting, why not share it with everyone and upload it here. You can view profiles on other list members in the MEMBERS section. (You can make your profile as detailed, or as vague, as you wish.) You can chat with other members online (with special software) in the CHAT section. You can view a calendar of upcoming events, and even have it send you e-mail reminder notices, in the CALENDAR section. You can check out some related links in the BOOKMARKS section; and finally, you can even participate in some online polls in the POLLS section. (I curently haven't the foggiest what kind of polls to create right now, but I'm sure to will get some good use sometime.)

The list group's online site is available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ACSKYWARN. Try it out and let us know what you think.

If you are not currently a member of the Alert List and would like to be, you will need to sign in. You must first create a new user ID and password at the Yahoo site, and then join the ACSKYWARN group. After that, when you log in, just tell it to "remember your name and password next time" and it won't ask you again. But just in case, always write your user ID and password down somewhere.

The Alert List's purpose is the dissemination of weather-related alerts that regard Alachua and surrounding counties, and the dissemination of Alachua County SKYWARN-related news and bulletins. The list is read-only (one-way), and it is not a "discussion" list; so your Inbox won't be filled with excess drivel if chat is not your bag.

* CHANGES TO NWS-JAX WEB PAGE (01/30/01)
NWS-JAX home page has had some additions, including new RADAR images to choose from, a new, quarterly newsletter to read, new online observation reporting forms, and more. Check out the NWS-JAX home page at http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax.

* NWS RADAR NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE (01/30/01)
The long awaited weather radar imagery is now available. See http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax/cgi-bin/master.pl?suite=radar. Products now available include base reflectivity, composite reflectivity, 1-hour precip, and storm total precip.

* NWS-JAX ONLINE QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER (01/30/01)
NWS-JAX is now publishing a quarterly newsletter called the Seabreeze Webletter. It can be found here: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax/cgi-bin/master.pl?suite=current It is currently available in Adobe PDF and WordPerfect9 formats, and an HTML version is planned, soon. Articles include quarterly and yearly weather summaries, editorials from Fred Johnson, what's new, planned events, descriptions of some of the things that they do at NWS-JAX, and a SKYWARN section.

* ADVANCED SPOTTER CLASS STATUS (Rev 11/28/00)
The Advanced Spotter Training class was held November 16th, at 7:00 PM, at ACFR HQ, 913 SE 5th Street, Gainesville. Instructor was Fred Johnson, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the NWS Office in Jacksonville. All tables were again full, but we only had a little over half the number of people in attendance as were at the Basic class in August. In the Basic class, we had 3 people per table; at the Advanced class, just 2 people per table. Total number who signed the attendance sheet: 26. Spotter ID cards, as well as SKYWARN bumper stickers, were mailed out before the class until my own supply ran out, and Fred handed out more cards on the day of the class.

We try to repeat the Basic and Advanced spotter training classes about every six months, or as the schedules of the instructors at NWS-JAX allows. The next upcoming class will be Basic Spotter Training. Date, time, and place yet to be arranged. If you would like to be placed on our SKYWARN e-mail Alert List - which includes local area watches and warnings, as well as announcements of upcoming classes, send an e-mail requesting to be added to the list to skywarn@fireline.org. No ads. Your info is not sold or shared. In fact, its just a simple BCC list that I maintain, personally.

* `RAISEN', THE "UNOFFICIAL SPOTTER MASCOT", NOW WITH GOD (Rev 10/20/00)
Suddenly, and without any prior warnings or indications, Raisen passed away at 11:23 PM on October 18th. I was working on a computer, working on it's BIOS setup, and Raisen was sleeping on the bed behind me, lying on her side when it occured. I tried everything I could, including CPR, and nothing would work. The next day we took her to the vets for an examination. It was discovered during a necropsy that Raisen had died from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which means "[thickened] [heart muscle disease]." It is a silent killer with no outward warning signs. It is a genetically pre-programmed disease. The examination revealed that Raisen's left heart chamber was "extremely thick, the wall thickened, and the chamber small." This means that the heart just wasn't able to get enough oxygen to her system. As well, the circulation was poor as a result. With blood not flowing fast enough through her heart, clots developed. It is thought that what happened to Raisen was a clot dislodged from her heart and travelled up an artery to the brain, causing instantaneous cessation of functions. It took us by complete surprise. She had just jumped upon the bed behind me, too, and I had not noticed her even come in. But, as usual, Raisen was near me, when it happened.

This cat once even survived a pygmi rattler bite on the nose, and being stuck 70 feet up a tall pine tree in the freezing cold of a winter's night.

Raisen was born on May 5th, 1993 at 2pm - two months before the Los Angeles earthquake. I was there the day she was born, and I fed her specialized milk from bottle droppers from my gloved hands as a kitten. I was her "daddy," and her best friend. I took the best of care of her and gave her the best possible life a kitty could ever have. I was there near her the day she left this earth. I got to spend just 7 years, 5 months, 14 days, and 9 hours of her wonderful life with her. It was far too short for a cat.

Raisen was my best and closest friend, and under my attentions, became the smartest cat I ever knew, being very adept and with a high learning ability, and was very quick of mind. She had personality, feelings and attitude to match. I'll never forget her, and she will be so sorely missed for a long time.

I never got to make the SKYWARN commercial I had always intended to make with her. I could have easily done it with her, though. She was just that smart.

For more information and photos about Raisen - including an animation of Raisen throwing herself into a tornado, you can visit Raisen's web page at http://www.afn.org/~afn47120/pets/raisen.html.

* NEW COSMETIC CHANGES TO WEB PAGE! (Rev 10/02/00)
In Microsoft Internet Explorer, if you remove, and then add right back, your Favorites links to this and any subpages, you'll note the addition of our SKYWARN logo to your Address Bar and next to your Favorites link! Also added new Java marquee scroller to replace the MSIE-only MARQUEE code, which eliminates herky-jerky motion of old scroller, and adds a few special effects. It is also viewable in both MSIE and Netscape, now. Changed document-wide font to `MS Sans Serif,' which I think looks neater. Removed the JavaScript clock, which contributed to marquee jerkiness, as well. Besides, Windows has its own clock.

* Gainesville Sun Article regarding 08/31/2001 Spotter Class

* Report on the July 20th Severe Wind Storm

* SKYWARN-L: A.C. SKYWARN Discussion List (Rev 15 JAN 98)
We've created a mailing list called the `SKYWARN-L SKYWARN Discussion List'. This is a local area mailing list that local SKYWARN spotters and wannabe's may now subscribe to in order to discuss things related to SKYWARN and weather spotting. See here for more information.

* SKYWARN Standard Operation Procedures Manual
Alachua County SKYWARN does have a Standard Operating Procedures Manual. This is our operating bible. Its constantly going through changes and updates, so check back here now and then to be sure you've got the latest edition. Choose from a version below. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Online HTML Version [Last Rev. 04 JUN 00]
Online TEXT Version [Last Rev. 04 JUN 00]
WP 6.0/6.1 Version [Last Rev. 11 SEP 98]
MS-WFW 2.0b Version [Last Rev. 20 Mar 98 - Missing]

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