Mobile Emergency Weather Station - Complete "How to build and use"

During times of emergency, weather is an important factor in rescue efforts. Be prepared to provide weather information to rescue workers.

We all know that weather can be quite different even 25 miles away. Not everyone has a weather station nearby that can accurately provide local details. Motor vehicles, aircraft and/or boats can be best deployed when the organizations/individuals know what weather conditions they will be facing and you are experiencing.

Professor Greg Lee, HS0ZHM / KI6GIG saw the need and wrote an instruction course on how to report weather complete with graphs and charts. He also has included construction details so that you may build your own weather station. Greg calls his program MEWS, Mobile Emergency Weather Station. The course is contained in two slide presentations. Clubs may want to take this weather station project as a group activity.

Volunteers are needed to translate this free course into other languages.

http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/org/rtcth Then click on "Pages & Links" where you will find the pdf downloads.

Read what Professor Lee has to say below.
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Sawadee Pi Mai สวัสดีปีใหม่
Respectful Greetings from the Northern Thailand!

My name is Greg, HS0ZHM / KI6GIG, living at about 19N, 100E. I am a relatively new Ham, retired Professor Emeritus of Geography and relocated from the US (Hawaii). Unfortunately, I struggle to learn Thai and haven't been very successful so far. However, in celebration of the Thai New Year, I would like to make a gift of MEWS (Mobile Emergency Weather Station) lessons to all radio amateurs.

Although I am new to Ham radio with little practical operating experience, I embrace the amateur radio idea of community service and helping others. To try to make a contribution to amateur radio, I have prepared a series of lessons about weather observation. I created a system I call MEWS (Mobile Emergency Weather Station). I am offering them to the amateur radio operators free of charge for NON-COMMERCIAL USE. At this time, these lessons are only in English. I am writing you to ask for your help to 1) to publicize the free availability of these lessons to any and all interested amateur radio operators; 2) to seek volunteers willing to translate these lessons to Thai or other languages (full credit for the translation work will be included in the presentations).

In times of disaster, official weather stations in the affected area may no longer function. Or there may be no station in the area at all. Local Hams, if trained in making weather observations could provide this vital information to relief / rescue authorities. Weather data affects logistics planning in for food, shelter, clothing, access to the area and many other aspects of relief work. Helicopters are a common asset and often the first over the disaster area. MEWS lessons include specific weather data for helicopter flight operations.

I have attached a list of the lessons. They are PDF slide shows divided into Basic and Advanced levels. Hams can study these on their own at home. Basic weather observations require little equipment....just a thermometer. The other materials (mainly reference tables and charts) are included in a MEWS Observer Handbook which I recently completed to go with the lessons. Basic MEWS Observers do not need to spend much money in order to do the work. I envision Hams trained in MEWS to be able to transmit weather reports following the MEWS data log form to relief authorities. If helicopters involved in relief flight operations carry VHF radios capable of amateur frequencies, 2-way communication with MEWS trained Hams can help improve flight safety. MEWS trained Hams could directly support local emergency helicopter landing zones.

At the end of the attached lesson directory are instructions about how to access the lessons. I just completed the MEWS Handbook in time for the Thai New Year. It has been posted to the same site and will be available free of charge for non-commercial use.

I would appreciate any feedback and suggestions on how to spread the word about MEWS to other amateur radio clubs.

Greg HS0ZHM / KI6GIG

 

MEWS Weather Observation and Communication

I tried to link up and download the MEWS Observers Handbook. I connected with the link but got nothing but a blank page when I tried to download the PDF. Bert, K6CSL

 

Bert,
Hi, this is Greg HS0ZHM / KI6GIG. Sorry you drew a blank...I check the site and seems the download went smoothly. So it doesn't seem to be a broken link.
The website is a "freebie" and sometimes if it gets busy, downloads sort of bog down or just don't. Some of the MEWS files are large, and depending on the speed of the connection might bog down.

Please try again and let me know if you still have problems.

best wishes and thanks for your interest.

 

I tried it just now and it worked for me. This is a lot of information that is available, but not always in a convenient manual and almost never written in the context of the type of support Amateur Radio provides to served agencies throughout the world. Thank you, Professor Lee, for your work in putting this together, and even greater thanks to you for sharing with the rest of the Amateur Radio community!

73!
Mark, NW0F

 

Mark,
Thanks for your confirmation on the working link. I really appreciate your comment, as I haven't had much hands-on Ham experience. So your affirmation of the utility of the MEWS lessons is comforting. I developed the lessons after reading various accounts of disasters and the post-disaster responses. My limited knowledge of amateur radio and contact with GERC (the Glendora Emergency Response Communications) group with my Elmer Mark (N7YLA) gave me the idea to compile this information. N7YLA and I organized a weather workshop for science teachers. We told them that weather should be easy to teach because everyone is affected by it; so they see it and experience it every day. So it just seemed natural to create relevant weather lessons for EmComm Hams.

My hope is that offering MEWS free to amateurs, that the goodwill of more experienced Hams will help me to improve the lessons based on their real world experiences in EmComm. Although I am a retired professor, I always professed that "all teachers should be students, and all students should be teachers." If anyone happens to spot errors, or has criticisms (I hope they will be constructive), please contact me. It's really hard to do anything perfect. But from what my Elmer and others have shown me, the team work, goodwill, and willingness to serve and help others dominates the amateur world.

Thanks for letting me part of it.

 

Heads UP SKYWARN Another Aid for the Toolbox........

Leo W7JPI

 

I have been trying to open the links with no luck. All I get is a black screen in the browser. It does not bring up Adobe reader to open the PDF files. Hopefully a different link can be set up . I am very interested in the weather station details

73's
Howard
KC2TYZ

 

Are you using a laptop? For some reason when I use my laptop on WIFI to download PDFs, it does not work right. I have found instead of just clicking on the link, saving the link works. Don't know if this will solve your problem.

 

This link goes directly to the page with the MEWS modules.

http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/RTC-TH_Tech/pages

Scroll down to that section.

 

Sounds great, I'll just put one in my mobile ATC van as well, that way I can act as forward aircraft controller with live weather while communicating to save the world.

Sigh. You know, for RACES, I've spent more time directing traffic and pointing people towards the water and san-o-lets than communicating. I'm sure this is filling another need.

I've only worked aircraft two times, and once was under it, putting rocks under the wheels so they could land it on the side of a mountain to pick up a victim.

We need a bigger van.

Pilots, in my experience, tend to be pretty good judges of weather conditions when they are flying in them.

 

The US Power Squadrons, and the USCGAUX both have excellent weather courses as well.

 

Howard,
Thanks for your interest. I am sorry to hear the links are giving you trouble. Maybe some details about your computer and connection could help shed more light. I've checked things on my end and the links are working as of this morning...(20 Apr, 0603 Thai time). If the problem persists, please feel free to email me (I am "in the book" ala the qrz.com call database HS0ZHM) and let's try to figure this out and get you to the lessons.

 

Thanks for you comments and experiences. The needs in emergency responses is a wide and as varied as the emergency situations. For my local area (mountainous northern Thailand), our remote province is sort of out of the way. There are only 3 government weather stations. Pilots also come in a wide array of abilities. MEWS was designed as a grassroots, pick yourself up and dust yourself off after the crunch, and get up and do something to try to help those who are trying to respond. Recently, a helicopter crashed in the mountains coming to our province from a neighboring one, and unfortunately all aboard were lost. Among the reasons cited; changing weather conditions en route, pilot being unfamiliar with the area. Everyone knows that weather changes, but it can do so more rapidly in mountainous terrain. In a rural province as ours, Basic MEWS relies on a compass and a thermometer (reinforced with a few reference charts) to systematically gather weather information, with notes of basic helicopter VFR conditions for observer awareness. This is way under the level of storm chasers, skywarn, and weather professionals. In recent floods that hit our province (the worst in 45 years), the one main highway was cut. Shortages abounded. Helicopters were the main way to get things in and out. MEWS is proposed as means to provide weather information from on the ground in a disaster area when normal weather resources are not available. While pilots may be good judges about flight weather conditions, MEWS strives to give them information. They are free to use it or not; they are, after all, in charge of the aircraft. And, in the end, a MEWS volunteer is just that...a volunteer that authorities and emergency responders are free to ignore.

 

OK, I gave it a look and reviewed the observers manual. The only thing I can find to quibble with is this:

Section on sending weather observations talks about Visual Flight Rules - As a pilot, I'd never trust someone to tell me if it's VFR or not unless that person was also a pilot or a trained weather observer, it's simply good sense.

Same for determining a landing zone - that is something that needs more hands-on training than any manual will teach you.

Other than that, I'd have to say not bad. I'm glad you are not emphasizing lots of hardware!

 

Thank KG6WOU, I appreciate your taking the time to look over the material. You are a most reasonable man. And I couldn't agree with you more about any pilot taking the word of any non-pilot about flight weather conditions. But consider this, at a minimum, a MEWS observer is aware that when visibility drops to the threshold indicated on the log form, they need to give a heads up to the flight crews. My thought was, in bound flights from outside the area at least get a heads up about what might be ahead. Weather is dynamic enough that no matter how current the reports are, the weather can change faster than the reporting system. Even in flight radar (which most helicopters don't have) may not be depicting the most current situation as the weather can be changing before the next sweep.

Thanks for affirming our decision to go no tech / low tech. It fits the impoverished rural areas that are the reality of our world, and it also makes it easy for folks to get started. Very much like the origins of Ham radio. Of course, with more money, sky's the limit (so to speak). But in much of the world, especially the developing and underdeveloped world, we don't have the advantage of ARES and well-trained volunteers like yourself. In Thailand, after the Dec 2004 tsunami, some Thai hams devoted countless hours meeting and talking with government officials proposing TARES (the Thai version of ARES). Unfortunately, burnout has overtaken the key amateurs in that effort. While officials are all on the clock and paid for their time and travel, the amateurs were not. And giving up work and pay to meet and greet...well, if you know about Asian culture and pomp and circumstance...it was financially draining. And just when approvals came down, the brick wall was funding. And once the funding was "known to exist", lots of critters came out of the wood work came out to get some of it. The short of it...nothing really got done.

As a grassroots effort, MEWS is motivated by the basic mantra guiding all emergency preparedness. By being prepared, you lighten the burden of the rescuers and buy them and yourself time before help arrives. It is my hope, that survivors can be empowered by MEWS to be less like victims and do what they can to assist those coming to assist them. So while I would love to have a monster van loaded with weather equipment, the harsh reality of a disaster zone is that I probably won't have a road to drive on nor the gas to drive with anyway. And Sparky, the electric vehicle that I have my MEWS gear in...well, its really my mobile battery pack. It probably won't have much chance on debris strewn roads...and recharging will be a pain in a disaster scenario. No, Sparky will be most likely positioned and parked in a safe area to provide battery back up power to Ham EmComm volunteers in our area. But with Basic MEWS volunteers (compass, thermometer, and 3 reference charts) they can go by foot, bike, or motorbike into mountainous terrain and try to give us a picture from on the ground of what's going on.

Again, thanks for taking the time and effort to give us your feedback.