With the AC-EMWIN system, we can send free NWS weather products to your e-mail account or text pager...free of advertisements.

Anyone wishing to receive NWS products either to their e-mail or pager should send an e-mail to us at skywarn@fireline.org.

We need to know a few things, first, though...

1. The name(s) of the weather products that you would like to receive. For some examples: severe thunderstorm watches/warnings, tornado watches/warnings, zone forecast products, short term forecasts, etc. A full listing of products can be found here.;
2. For which county area(s) you would like to receive them. (Multiple counties may be specified.)
3. When you would not like to receive them (if there are any time periods through which you would not like to receive them). For example, say between 10pm and 7am.
4. The name of the pager service provider that you use. Here's a list of providers and the services that they offer, to help you.
5. The method that you would like us to use to send you a page. For example, to a pager's e-mail address; or by using one of the following paging methods: WTCP, SNPP, or TAP.
6. Your pager's PIN number.

The system can send Full Text, Full Text with No Headings, Selected Text, Selected Text with No Headings, and Short messages.

• Full Text. The whole message is sent in it's entirety, with bulletin ID, and all header information intact.
  [Example] (Recommended only for e-mails.)
• Full Text with No Headings. All of the text, but with the heading lines removed.
  [Example] (Recommended only for e-mails.)
• Selected will send only the text in the message's UGC group associated with the alarm. This means that if a bulletins has, say, the forecast for multiple counties (sorted by UGC groups - That's the "FLZ000-036..." stuff that you see), and you only want the text for Alachua County, then this will only send the text relating to Alachua County.
  [Example] (Recommended only for e-mails.)
• Selected No Headings removes the heading lines from the messages, and sends only the part of the bulletin for the county area selected.
  [Example] (Recommended only for e-mails.)
• Short just sends a customized, very short, abbreviated message, such as..."NWS-JAX has issued a Tornado Warning for Alachua County, until 7:00PM."
  [Examples] (This method is recommended for sending to pagers.)

PARSING:

The short pager messages can be broken down into small packets suitable for sending to cellular phones and pagers. We can send in 80-character increments. Most text pagers can handle from 120 to 240 characters. You will need to know and be able to tell us your own pager's limitations. This will help us to format the appropriate message length when we send to your pager.

We can use what is called "parsing" to reduce the size of pager messages sent even further. Parsing strips all line feeds and carriage returns from a message, and also uses a word substitution file to abbreviate words, allowing space for more words to fit onto the limited displays of pagers. [Example]

DECIPHERING ABBREVIATIONS USED

If you don't know what an abbreviation means, you can use the Word Substitution File to find out. Most abbreviations should be common sense; but some may be more difficult. In those cases, use of this list should help you. This word file is a constant work in progress, since we change things in it as we learn.

Page Created: August 08, 2003.
Last Updated: January 23, 2004.

Copyright (C) 2003-2004 Alachua County SKYWARN. All Rights Reserved.