Via the ARRL: Grace and Henri Keep Amateur Radio Weather Spotters Busy

Hurricane Grace and Hurricane Henri drew the attention of weather spotters over the past week. The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN), which tracked both storms to gather weather data for the National Hurricane Center (NHC), was able to secure operations at 1800 UTC on August 22 after watching Grace make two landfalls in Mexico.

“Things got busy — and fast,” said HWN Manager Bobby Graves, KB5HAV. “Just before activating at 1200 UTC [on Sunday], Henri was downgraded from a Category 1 hurricane to a tropical storm. Normally, we — HWN — don’t activate for tropical storms. However, given the wind speed at the time of activation was just shy of being a hurricane, there was a slim possibility Henri could regain Category 1 status.” And, Graves noted, the storm was headed into the densely populated northeastern US. The rainfall generated by Henri, some of it record-breaking, caused heavy flooding in some areas, including New York City. That storm came ashore near Westerly, Rhode Island, which suffered most of the region’s power outages at 80,000 customers (out of 130,000 that went dark).

Read more – via American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources http://www.arrl.org/news/view/grace-and-henri-keep-amateur-radio-weather-spotters-busy