CONTENTS:

• What Is EMWIN?
• What Does This System Do?
• Who Can Use This System? and How?
• EMWIN Equipment List
• A Cooperative Involvement
• AC-EMWIN Project History
• AC-EMWIN `To Do' List
• Signal Reports
• Available EMWIN Text Products
• Available EMWIN Graphics Products
• Downloads
• PowerPoint Presentations
• GET FREE WEATHER ALERTS TO YOUR PAGER OR CELLPHONE!
• User Comments

What Is EMWIN?

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.

What Does THIS System Do?

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, the ACOEM system is used mostly "in-house". They output their info to a couple of ACOEM-run 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 by ACOEM that to do so would take too much time, effort, resources, and money; so they refused responsibility from FDEM for an additional EMWIN system and it's operation, and then they notified Todd Sherman of the existence of the spare system and asked if Alachua County SKYWARN would like to take control of it.

Our system does much the same thing as the EOC EMWIN system; however, we cater to the general public - at no cost, as a public service. We can send products out to your text pager, as well as to your e-mail Inbox. We're also FTPing products to our own AC-EMWIN web site, and a watch/warning map to the Alachua County SKYWARN main page. (If you like, we can even FTP the watch/warning map to your OWN web site!) We're sending bulletins to various other agencies, including UF-IFAS, NAVSTA Mayport, Keystone Heights Fire Department workers, various local companies, various email lists (AC-SKYWARN Email Alert List, ACEMWIN-HURR-L Hurricane Bulletins List for some examples), to the AC-EMWIN Twitter Alerts site, etc.

The AC-EMWIN system was transferred to Todd Sherman, Founder and Project Manager of the Alachua County EMWIN Project by John Fleming of the Florida Division of Emergency Management in 2002. Other groups and organizations also helped with the initial operation of the Project in various ways. (See below).

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. 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.

A Cooperative Involvement

This is a truly cooperative venture involving various agencies and groups; including:

• Alachua County SKYWARN (ACS) - Provided most support for the AC-EMWIN Project, and provided manpower for technical assistance.
• Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) - Offered the EMWIN system to us, providing us with the entire system at no cost - EMWIN computer & software, 5' satellite dish, base & receiver, transmitter radio & antenna, and coax, and handled the licensing so that we are able to use the pre-assigned frequency of 163.325 MHz to transmit on;
• National Weather Service (NWS) - sends out the actual text products that the EMWIN system receives, actually approves the local area EMWIN retransmission licensing;
• J.H. Miller Health Sciences Center - Physical Plant Division - Permission to place the EMWIN system within Dental Science Building, rooftop access/location for satellite dish and retransmitting antenna and feedline, power for the system, place to house transmitter, receiver, and computer;
• Shands Communications - Cooperated with testing of the EMWIN system to ensure no interference to their own and hospital systems, provided us with an account on their own paging system for EMWIN pager testing (a separate EMWIN-related project) which allowed a secondary means of SKYWARN-related admin notifications.
• Gator Paging - Tom Woodruff has also been a great help - taking old, unused 900 MHz pagers and using their parts to help create 150 MHz pagers that could be used with the Shands paging system, repairing problems with some pagers, and so on, so that the secondary pager notification system could be used. Thanks, Tom!
• Satellite Services, Inc. - Thanks to Brad Tyler/K4LDX for actually installing the satellite dish and dish mount, testing the reception for us, and tacking the coaxial feedline part of the way into the GARC club station for us. Brad actually donated the mounting and parts needed to accomplish this job - out of his own pocket! Our grateful thanks to you, Brad!
• Gator Amateur Radio Club (GARC) - place to house transmitter, receiver, and computer, some manpower and technical assistance;
• Gainesville Amateur Radio Society (GARS) - some small manpower and technical assistance;

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