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CONTENTS:
EMWIN stands for the
Emergency Managers Weather Information Network. It is a
datastream that provides free emergency weather information and other
related data. In 1995 the National Weather
Service recognized the need to provide the emergency management community
with access to a set of NWS warnings, watches, forecasts, and other
products at no recurring cost. The datastream is
distributed through three methods -- Internet, satellite, and VHF broadcast.
Funding, volunteer work, and/or technical assistance for EMWIN is provided
by the National Weather Service, the
Federal Emergency Management Agency,
and other public and private organizations.
The Alachua County Office of Emergency
Management has an EMWIN system set up and running now in the
Alachua County Combined Communications & Emergency Operations Center
(see map). However, their
system is RECEIVE-ONLY. That is, it receives the signals from the satellite,
but it does not transmit it out over the air. They output their info to
lists and local in-house servers and such. They have the ability to serve
a much wider audience such as the general public just as we're doing, but it
was decided that to do so would take too much time and effort and so ACOEM
called Alachua County SKYWARN and advised us of the existence of some spare
EMWIN equipment FDEM had and asked if we'd be interested in operating and
maintining it.
The AC-EMWIN system was transferred to
Alachua County SKYWARN by the
Florida Division of Emergency
Management in 2002. While Alachua County SKYWARN is now the
actual owner, some other groups and organizations also help with the
operation of the Project in various ways, however.
(See below).
The advantage of the transmitting system is that it's over-the-air
retransmissions of the data offer an alternative backup source of weather
information where all other methods may fail - especially during power
outages. Even the NOAA Weather Radio repeater site has only a finite, limited
battery backup; and when that runs out - as happens often after
hurricanes have hit... The over-the-air retransmissions allow users to still
be able to receive the watches, warnings, and other bulletins and alerts (that
we get from straight off of the GOES-12 satellite) without interruption if
power goes out and all other sources become unavailable. The data also
comes without the very common lags and delays that are so often inherent to the
Internet when things get hectic 0 BECAUSE we're getting them straight off
the satellite. We've even found that our bulletins very often meet or beat
the bulletins issued over the NOAA Weather Radio System. The Weather Radio is
essential; but with the voice system there are often times when people missed
the details and then they have to wait for the next repeat in the bulletin
cycle - which could take a many minutes to happen. With EMWIN, people can
actually read the live text of a bulletin at any time, without delay, and save
it and/or print it out it. Services such as IWIN and similar are great,
too; but they don't update nearly as fast as this. You can sit there hitting
the REFRESH button all day hoping and waiting for the next update, or you can
make use of EMWIN and have the data. :o)
Who Can Use This System? and How?
Anyone can use the AC-EMWIN data, receiving it either by connecting
directly to our server over the Internet, or by receiving our data signals
from over the air.
To receive our EMWIN data using Internet direct-connect method, see
Connecting To The AC-EMWIN Server Over The Internet.
To receive our EMWIN signals over the air, you'll need any old cheap scanner
(or a radio capable of receiving 163.325 MHz), a small "demodulator" device,
and a computer running one of the many EMWIN softwares available (see below)
to interpret the 1200 baud data signals and display the data.
The WeatherNode
software (free) will then allow you to see the weather alerts and notices on
your computer screen, and lets you to customize what you receive. You can
also use RealEMWIN ($69.95),
or WeatherMessage ($35.00). WeatherMessage
can be used for free to connect directly to our server if you do NOT load the
server part of the program, and only use the Map and/or Message
Client parts. See Connecting To The AC-EMWIN
Server Over The Internet for more about that.)
Unless you're stationed someplace long-term, like at a shelter perhaps, or
perhaps you're mobile using a laptop, most people probably won't be using the
over-the-air retransmissions that we put out. However, as mentioned before,
they can use the direct-connect method, or the text paging and
e-mail services - all of which we've made available for free to anyone. For
the email and/or text paging services, just let us know which products you're
interested in and we can set you up to receive them right in your inbox, or to
your personal text pager. If you would like us to do so, see
Receiving Emails & Pages, or just send
us an e-mail at skywarn@fireline.org.
To help you decide which products you want, please see our
Text Products list.
We also have a number of updated Graphical
Products available for viewing only. We are unable to e-mail the
graphics to anyone, unfortunately.
NOTE: Users should recognize that while this system is a great
convenience, it should NOT be considered as a replacement
for the NOAA Weather Radio.
This is a truly cooperative venture involving various agencies and
groups; including:
![[On Air]](onair.gif)
![[Pager Example]](advisor-tor.gif)
Our system does much the same thing as the EOC EMWIN system; however, our's is
also able to actually transmit the weather data (watches, warnings,
forecasts and other bulletins) out on a frequency of 163.325 MHz at 1200
baud, 8/N/1. People can also use their own home computers to connect directly
to our server to receive the same data, if they wish. People can even connect
to our server using their PDAs! We can send products out to your text pager,
as well as to your e-mail Inbox. We're also FTPing products to our EMWIN web
site, and a watch/warning map to the Alachua County SKYWARN
main page. We're sending bulletins to various other agencies, including
UF-IFAS, NAVSTA Mayport, Keystone Heights Fire Department workers, various
local companies, various email lists, etc. Imagine a Weather Radio...only on
your computer. When a watch or warning is issued, an alarm sound plays, a
live map is updated to show which counties are affected, and you can click on
the text of the watch or warning to read it at will, You can even view the
latest radar, satellite image, or graphic - and animate it. At the same time,
the same bulletin is sent to your email, text-capable cellphone and/or pager,
and your PDA. It's incredible what we've been able to do with EMWIN. We
envision it being used in schools, fire stations, forestry... See if you
can think of a place where it can be useful! The possibilities are endless!
The demodulator device at the left allows your computer to hear the 1200 baud
data signals from off of your scanner through it's external earphone jack.
The demodulator here is only about 1-1/2" by 1-1/2" by 1/4" in size. It has
a female 1/8-inch audio-in on one side, and an RS-232 port connector on the
other side. This one is called the WX-41 and is found at
Zephyrus Products. Another one, called
the NWX-12 - which does the exact same thing as the WX-41 - can be found on
the net at Tigertronics for
less than half of the price of the WX-41.
Alachua County SKYWARN
E-mail: skywarn@afn.org
Phone: (352) 379-4911
Page Created: February 10, 2003.
Last Updated: November 24, 2006.
Page Copyright © 2002-2006 by Alachua County SKYWARN.
All Rights Reserved.
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