There is a long association between weather and radio in general and Amateur Radio in particular. When broadcast radio started to become in general use, people began to rely on it for local weather reports. Amateur Radio was also found to be useful for spreading weather reports, not only locally but over long distances. One topic of conversation over the radio has always been the weather. Many QSOs include the local weather. It does go deeper than just chatting, however. Hams are concerned about the weather. If thunderstorms come along, it is bad to have your equipment hooked up in case of a lightening strike. Hail and high winds can take down antennas. Trees can come down during storms and flooding can cause all kinds of havoc.

Amateur Radio operators (hams) have been and still are relied upon to provide back-up communications in emergencies and a lot of emergencies are weather related. Even if a ham cannot get to an area and assist with communications they can still be of value by reporting local conditions. A lot of hams have weather stations in their yard and can report things such as temperatures, pressure changes and precipitation totals to the NWS. There are phone apps that allow you to report (mPing is one example and is free) local conditions. What do you do if your cell service is out? Well there are a lot of clubs out there that hold nets when there is severe weather. You can log into a net on a repeater and report. They usually have a back-up plan in the event that repeaters are down. There are also weather nets on the HF bands where you can report conditions. A lot of options exist.

At the extreme end, there are hams who go out spotting bad storms such as tornados. anyway, here is a list of some resources to use if you want to get into weather reporting or learn more about the weather:

http://www.weather.gov is the National Weather Service website

https://www.weather.gov/SKYWARN This is the official NWS Skywarn page

https://www.weather.gov/skywarn/wfo_links This is a link to find local spotter classes in your area

https://www.meted.ucar.edu/education_training/course/23 This is a link to online spotter training

https://www.skywarn.org/local-groups/ And finally a link to locate groups in your area.

I hope this has been useful information to someone out there. 🙂