Heavy Weather In Progress
Should we talk about the weather? Should we talk about the government?
Litchfield County, Connecticut has been getting the crap hammered out of it all afternoon into this evening. So while I didn’t hear any calls due to a combination of alcohol and explosives, the heavy weather has more than made up for it.
Federal law prohibits me from disclosing the specific communications I’ve been intercepting all afternoon. What I can say is that I’ve been monitoring fire dispatch channels within a 10 mile radius, and they have been so busy that I had to turn on a second receiver so I didn’t lose any communications for my town. It might get busy enough that I have to break out a third receiver.
Tonight qualifies as SHTF. It started with the SAME decoder going off for a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. Then the shit hit the fan, and the calls started coming in. A $20 scanner you picked up at a hamfest, tag sale, or flea market can probably hear most of it, or at least enough so that you know what’s going on.
The last line of thunderstorms has passed by me, weather radar shows another line to my west coming in later. I’ll probably be asleep, but tomorrow is Sunday and my plans for a hilltop COMMEX (Communications Exercise) have been altered to remove the hill. I’ll just hang out in the workshop/lab, and listen to the recovery operations that’ll be going on tomorrow.
What do I use for weather information?
https://www.weather.gov/nwr - NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards “NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR) is a nationwide network of radio stations broadcasting continuous weather information directly from the nearest National Weather Service office. NWR broadcasts official Weather Service warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
https://www.lightningmaps.org/ - Real Time Lightning Map This site is awesome. Sometimes I’ll turn on an AM Radio and listen to the crackle of nearby electrical storms while watching this site. On a good night I’ll hear them 200 miles away.
https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap - Weather Underground Wumdermap I turn off the weather stations layer, and turn on the radar and storm track layers.
https://radar.weather.gov/ - NWS Radar Different functionality than Weather Underground, and an alternate view.
Right now the region is mostly dealing with flooding, downed wires and trees, and electrical outages. Serious, but survivable, and something everyone can be able to deal with, even if they are on a severe budget.