Good day.

First I want to thank you all for registering for the Skywarn Recognition Day event coming up this weekend. 

There are a lot of changes that needed to be made to make this work this year, and rather than just scrap SRD completely, we have tried to incorporate other ways to make it work.

The link to the recording is online at the Facebook Group page and included here for your reference.

Recorded Webinar

To that end, here are some answers to some of the more frequent questions:

SRD Event Numbers - these will be provided ONLINE later today.  There have been a number of technical difficulties that cropped up over the past week that have prevented updates to the Skywarn Recognition Day webpage. Where will these be listed?

https://www.weather.gov/crh/skywarnrecognition

Operating Procedures - this is probably where the greatest changes have occurred. The NWS offices will not have volunteers in their facilities this year, so we had to improvise. The idea this year, for amateur radio operations, reach out to as many registered Skywarn Spotters (again, the list of registered participants will be online at the link above) and NWS offices as you can.  There are almost 800 registered participants. 

What about Skywarn Spotters without amateur Radio Licenses? How do I participate?  Join in on the local NWS office social media pages, work with local spotter groups, have Zello or other communications tools in place?  Lacking those options, the Skywarn Recognition Day Facebook Group will be hosting a number of live events (a schedule will be released and posted online after we have finalized the speakers - Thursday or Friday of this week.)

I haven't gotten any information - Much of the information has been sent via e-mail using the e-mail provided during the registration for SRD. I have had to research and correct over 30 mistyped e-mail addresses, so there have been some lost e-mails. I have tried to correct as many as I can; but there are some that just can be recovered. 

A lot of information is being pushed to the Facebook Group (see links above.)

This is disorganized and chaotic - Yes it has been. We had to make adjustments and felt it was time to incorporate some of the other methods of communication.

Skywarn Recognition is about Skywarn Spotters and given the current situation, we have a chance to encourage and recognize all Skywarn Spotters. The amateur radio component is different, because honestly there are only a handful of NWS offices participating this year. That being said, almost 700 amateur radio operators have signed up to participate. Who can you reach?

Above all else, this is meant to be fun. We have participants from across the NWS service area AND Canada registered to participate. This is more than one region, one state, one county, one city, one person, this is the community of Skywarn Spotters, spanning shoreline to shoreline, from ocean to highest mountains. It will be inherently messy - and that's what we are called to do, make it work and bring out the best in us in service to our country.

Thank you for your consideration, participation and encouragement.