Skywarn is a concept developed in the late 1960s that was intended to promote a cooperative effort between the National Weather Service and communities.

Although Skywarn spotters provide essential information for all types of weather hazards, the main responsibility of a spotter is to identify and describe severe local storms. In the average year, 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods and more than 1,000 tornadoes occur across the United States. These events threatened lives and property.

Become a trained spotter by attending a Spotter training conducted by the National Weather Service. Or, learn more on your own with these resources from Skywarn National. One document all hams should read is this Basic Spotters’ Field Guide by NOAA/NWS.

Here in Shelby County, a severe weather net will be called once we are notified by Central Indiana Skywarn operating on either of the W9ICE Indianapolis repeaters(see list below). We monitor both repeaters when ever severe weather threatens Shelby County. If you monitor one or the other of these W9ICE repeaters during a Severe Weather event, you will generally get some advance warning of what type of severe weather is headed our way. Once notified, a net control operator will bring up the Severe Weather Net here in Shelby County on the 145.48MHz repeater and do a roll call and ask for check-ins. Once the net is up and running we ask that all net participants stand by unless they have a valid severe weather incident to report to the net control operator. Net control will yield to any emergency traffic but we ask that other traffic be directed to one of the other Shelby County repeaters that are not being used for Severe Weather Net. We ask for your cooperation during these nets to keep the repeater open and available for Severe Weather incident reporting.

Central Indiana Skywarn Net Linked Repeater System

Indianapolis
146.970MHz -600kHz pl 77.0 W9ICE
442.650MHz +5MHz pl 77.0 W9ICE

Frankfort
147.045MHz +600kHz pl 173.8 N9KYB

Freetown (near Seymour)
147.435MHz simplex pl 77.0 W9ICE

Russiaville (near Kokomo)
442.525 +5MHz pl 131.8 N9KYB

Terre Haute
444.350MHz +5MHz NC9U

Vincennes
146.925MHz -600kHz, pl 107.2 W9EAR
443.925MHz +5MHz, pl 107.2 W9EAR