Weather Amateur Radio Network - Cincinnati

04/11/2025

You should come!

And BECAUSE we’re a cool museum, we’re asking that you DO touch that dial!

We’re hosting a day fit for radio enthusiasts. Join us on Saturday, April 19 for an all-day celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the International Amateur Radio Union in Paris in 1925.

Here are a few things to expect throughout the day:
📻 Learn about the Amateur Radio Service in its development and practice of the latest radio communications and technology, and as a hands-on pathway into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields for the next generation!

📻 Learn about the discovery of radio waves, view local history objects including a “kit” put together by local amateurs in the 1950s and more in the Cincinnati History Museum.

📻 The STEM Lab will feature demonstrations on the building blocks of radio and hands-on displays where you can practice Morse code.

📻 Plus, see and experience ham radio in action. We will have equipment to talk to other stations through satellites as they pass overhead, see how email can be sent without the internet and how computers interface with radios to send signals and, of course, how ordinary voice communications take place over radio.

For more information about this special theme day, visit https://www.cincymuseum.org/world-amateur-radio-day/

Image: A screengrab of Amy Poehler in the movie Mean Girls with text saying, "We're not a regular museum, we're a cool museum."

04/01/2025

The National Weather Service will hold a briefing for public safety partners this afternoon.

The next Day Two outlook from the NOAA NWS Storm Prediction Center is due at 130pm EDT...we encourage you to review it once it is published.

03/03/2025

Heads up: Due to the potential for active weather Tuesday Night into Wednesday, the Kentucky Statewide Tornado Drill has been postponed to Friday, March 7th at 10:07 AM EST/9:07 AM CST.

01/07/2025

A request from the National Weather Service after the recent winter storm:

Thank you for all the reports yesterday. We have a few holes. If anyone has any reports from Switzerland, Carroll, Owen, Grant, Pendleton, Bracken, Robertson, or Mason Counties we would appreciate any that you have for those locations.

07/30/2024

While no official request has been received from , has self-activated due to tornado warnings in Franklin and Butler Counties. Ham radio operators please relay severe weather reports on 146.88- MHz.

07/09/2024

ALERT! is activating the Cincy area amateur radio net at 4:00PM local at the request of in support of spotting operations for tornado watch affecting our counties

Severe weather, tornado, thunderstorm, fire weather, storm report, tornado watch, severe thunderstorm watch, mesoscale discussion, convective outlook products from the Storm Prediction Center.

07/04/2024

Cincinnati SkyWARN in session for the severe thunderstorm watch for the "southern tier" of NKY. Standard frequencies.

06/30/2024

Hello all. For many years, the Weather Amateur Radio Network (WARN) has hosted two mailing lists (News and Alert) used to inform interested parties of information related to WARN. The most important thing we used them for was to send net activations to the alert list when the National Weather Service requested our amateur radio network to be activated during severe weather. Most subscribers chose to have those alerts go to their cellular phone's text message address.

In recent years, it has become more difficult to keep these email lists working properly because cellular phone companies and email providers like Google's Gmail have been taking steps to reduce spam emails and texts. These steps either block list messages altogether, or severely delay them by hours (or days). Obviously, this does not work in a time-critical situation. As a reminder to our ham radio operators, our net, encompassing the 17 Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio counties surrounding Cincinnati is active on 146.88 MHz just about anytime there is a severe thunderstorm or tornado watch affecting our area.

We have been using X (Twitter) because it is convenient for some net activations, but it is still not ideal. We are looking at a couple of options to replace at least the alert mailing list. The news mailing list can probably be replaced by social media. Subscribing to a texting service is not in the WARN budget because those are relatively expensive.

Please keep watching our X (Twitter) and Facebook feeds for more information, and we'll put something on our web site when something changes.

But for now, THE USE OF BOTH THE WARN NEWS AND ALERTS MAILING LISTS WILL BE DISCONTINUED IMMEDIATELY as they are an ineffective distraction.

As always, thanks to everyone for their support of our mission to aid the NWS with warning the public of severe weather threats!

04/02/2024

Latest update:

04/01/2024

The 147.375+ repeater is back online in Northern KY. It may be serving both SkyWARN and emergency management support in the next 30 hours - if you need a reliable way to report severe weather and you are south of the 146.88- footprint, please try here. It will be relayed.

04/01/2024

Now it is out...

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day2otlk.html

We are working to line up net control shifts for tomorrow as this forecasted threat level is significant and not common for our region.

We will post more as we know more. In the Cincinnati region, primary operations will be hosted on 146.88- PL123.

There was a repeater issue in NKY...they are working on it and we will provide updates when available.

Thanks for your patience and your attention...

04/01/2024

Yes, we are awaiting the Storm Prediction Center Day 2 Outlook, just like you are. We'll post about our plans once we see it.