Emergency Communications Committee

ARES  &  CANWARN

K-W Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) as of 2004 encompasses both general emergency communications needs in the region, and severe weather reporting for CANWARN.

Our club has taken on the responsibility of supporting both of these services. Larry Gorman VE3LGN is our overall ARES Emergency Coordinator.

Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) is the emergency response section of Radio Amateurs Canada. RAC organizes emergency training programs and helps to organize groups Canada wide.  Local clubs provide the Amateurs to operate in their respective jurisdictions.

KWARC ARES

KWARC ARES is an active member of the Waterloo Regional Social Services Emergency Planning Advisory Committee. (SSEPAC). We participate at the quarterly  meetings on a regular basis, as well as Regional emergency simulation exercises. 

      Each spring the club runs an emergency  message handling training exercise, during one of our regularly scheduled club meetings. All members are encouraged to participate.

 (For more ARES information refer to the column in the monthly club newsletter The Kilowatter.

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                        KWARC - CANWARN

CANWARN  was  initiated in Ontario by Randy Mawson VE3TWS of the Southern Ontario Weather Office, an arm of the Federal Ministry of the Environment Severe Weather Service. Since that time it has expanded into Northern Ontario and Manitoba. Its counterpart in the USA is known as SKYWARN.

        The Ontario Weather Office sponsors a CANWARN  training session locally on the UofW campus at the end of  the spring term. This as an annually updated Audio Visual presentation combining weather theory and actual severe weather  incidents. This meeting is open to all interested Amateurs and friends.

        The KWARC  CANWARN managers organize our local Net Control Group each spring in preparation for the Summer Severe Weather Season. The team is rostered such that a pair of us will be on call at all times to initiate, monitor and respond to Environment Canada CANWARN alerts. Each Controller has a pager that is connected directly to the Ontario Region Severe Weather desk in Downsview. This is the agency that initiates all Severe Weather public announcements.

As the pager callout is Ontario wide, one of our responsibilities is to analyze radar weather scans to determine if our area will be directly affected. Thus we may occasionally announce a heads up to the effect that we are still evaluating incoming, but have not as yet activated a full CANWARN Net.

Local CANWARN nets rely on the help of both local  and visiting Amateurs traveling within range of our VE3KSR repeater  ( 146.970 Tone 131.8) located high on the Baden Hill near Petersburg. The active Controller relays dangerous weather reports directly to the Toronto Severe Weather desk.

If unable to access this repeater try calling up repeater VE3RCK (146.865) which currently does not require a Tone Code. Critical information will be reported to the Ontario Severe Weather Desk. This information is used by Environment Canada to assist with updates to the media.

If you should be called upon in an emergency, or you become aware of a situation, consider helping. If you spot severe weather, don't hesitate to call in on one of our repeaters. One of the mandates of Amateur radio is:

 "In emergencies we serve".

de Larry VE3LGN           March  2010
            ARES EC                          

CANWARN –Summer 2011 Severe Weather Season

Our Summer Storm monitoring sessions, which ran from May to October have now concluded.  K-W CANWARN net controllers activated 5 nets, one each month, by chance. Again this year the most severe weather passed around us. However we did monitor a number of severe thunder storms with damaging winds and heavy rain. Significant hail, and flooding were reported on two separate occasions.

A large part of the need for running the nets is similar to the rationale of most HF nets. (ONTARS, Laurentian, Maritime Mobile etc). They provide an opportunity for the Controllers to develop a "team" of listeners, so that when we do have a serious event locally, we can count on responders to check in. Please consider an initial check in during a Condition Green whenever a net is called, even if you have no current weather to report. This will help us to get a fix on areas not yet experiencing the severe weather, and another contact if conditions worsen.

Thanks to all controllers, and especially Nick and Dave, who handled the majority of this summers weather alerts.

        Our Net Controllers, who each committed to four 2 week standby sessions, were Ben VE3ST, Bob VE3NXB , Bonnie VA3BLM, Keith VA3QF (Cambridge), Nick VA3NNW, Dave VE3PMT, and Larry VE3LGN.

I sent an update Geoff Coulson recently about our local CANWARN program. He submitted this report:

            I haven't had a chance to look at the number of CANWARN page-outs Larry, but I did get a preliminary report on the number of summer severe weather events across the province this year. The total number of events this year was 122 which is around the long-term average. Of those 122 events, 40 were large hail, 52 were damaging winds, 16 were heavy rain and 14 were tornadoes. The Goderich tornado on August 21st was the first F3 in Ontario in over 15 years and the first to go through the heart of a town in decades. Operational forecast staff were grateful for the numerous reports received by CANWARN volunteers this year and they were very helpful in assisting in the diagnosis and forecasting of a number of severe weather events.

             Thanks again for keeping the K-W group a vibrant part of the CANWARN Ontario network.

Geoff Coulson

Environment Canada

                                                            Larry VE3LGN

                                                Emergency Coordinatoer

                                                        K-W ARC

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