Consider this “some time in the future” scenario:
The internet is gone, probably never to return. EMP, CME, war, hacking or AI gone terribly wrong, or maybe it just disappeared and no one knows how or why. It doesn’t matter why – it’s just gone. Amid the many efforts to get things running again, a group of ham radio operators and weather hobbyists decide to build the Radio Weather Service in place of what used to be known as the National Weather Service: a do-it-yourself, crowd-sourced weather forecasting service operated by the people – not the government.
❏ What would such a system look like?
❏ What tools would be needed?
❏ How would it be coordinated?
❏ How would it be built?
❏ How would data be collected, analyzed, and distributed?
❏ How accurate would it be with just a scattered handful of stations reporting?
❏ A name is important – what should this be called?
Attempting to answer those questions is what this is all about, and in the process, building such a system and making it work. This is for weather hobbyists both serious and casual, and for any ham radio operator interested in a very practical, hands-on way to work through a scenario-based problem. No, we’re not going to pretend that the internet is gone – we’re just using that as the backstory and any solutions we come up with have to fit into that scenario.
Our goal is to end up with a fully functioning system to collect local weather reports, feed those reports to the weather forecasters, and then distribute the weather forecasts through the Bulletin Distribution Net and other ham radio nets.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Want to be a part of this project? Use the Contact form, and we’ll take it from there.
