Medford Skywarn

SKYWARN Information for Amateur Radio Operators
in the Medford, OR NWS Operational Area.

SKYWARN

The SKYWARN™ spotter program is a nationwide network of volunteers trained by the National Weather Service that provide us with timely and accurate severe weather reports. Reports arrive at our office via volunteer citizens with access to a phone or internet, citizen band radio operators, or licensed Amateur Radio Operators which are then used to send out warnings and short-term forecasts to the public.

New WX Spotter Classes Avaiable. . . Check The Training Page. . .

Skywarn repeaters are located on MT Ashland at 7500 feet.  The frequencies are 147.260 with a +600 split and PL of 123 and 440.700 with normal 5 MHz split and PL of 162.2.

NWS MFR(National Weather Service Medford) also has a packet entry point on MT Ashland for reporting severe weather spotter reports via packet radio.  This is on 145.030 and the ID is SKYWRN.  Once u get a connect then enter:  BBS and hit return.  it will then connect to NWS office in MFR via a 440 MHz downlink.  This link is temporarily down and should be fixed next month.

If your close enough you can also hit the packet station direct at NWS office via 145.070 at this time(may change back later to 145.090, if so then will be posted on this website and via email notification).  the ID is NWSBBS.

 We are in the process of re-establishing the link to NWS BBS via SOAPRA.  when we lost SODA we lost out entry point into SOAPRA and are working on re-establishing it through King Mountain as we had originally.  Once we do it will show as a Node on the King Mountain Node List.

 Once in the BBS there are instructions on how to submit a severe weather spotter report via Amateur packet.  We will also have these instructions on this website in the future.

 Packet is the preferred way of submitting spotter reports according to the NWS in Medford.  It is totally automatic and does not require any intervention on their part.

Check into the Oregon Emergency Services Net HF net on 3990 LSB int he mornings and submit the weather from your area. the net is suppose to start at 8AM but start taking early check-ins at 7:30AM. the info is collected with special software by the net control station for that morning and then forwarded to NWS PDX(Portland) and once uploaded appears on the NWS website about 5 to 6 minutes later. This WX info from each station is helpful to NWS.

You can see the resulting report on the Medford NWS website at:
www.wrh.noaa.gov/mfr/  Go under Current Conditions and u will see
Observations. then under "Weather Roundup" click on Oregon Ham reports.

This will include reports from all over Oregon and some outlying areas in WA and ID.

CoCoRaHS Reporting.
If you have a WX station that is Internet capable, you can join the NWS CoCoRaHS Reporting System. For more info see the NWS MFR website at:
www.wrh.noaa.gov/mfr/  under Current Conditions, Weather Summaries.

You will find the CoCo RaHS reports and also a link to more info on CoCoRaHS and how to join.