Severe weather
SKYWARN
Live alerts for the area, what is worth reporting, and how to phrase it. Radar sees rotation; it cannot see a tornado on the ground, hail in a driveway, or a tree across a road. That is what spotters are for.
Active alerts
It refreshes on its own, but a web page that quietly fails looks exactly like a web page with no alerts. Keep NOAA Weather Radio and phone alerts as your primary notification — this is for situational awareness once you already know something is happening.
What to report
The National Weather Service severe thresholds are hail one inch or larger and wind of 58 mph or more, plus any tornado, funnel cloud or wall cloud. Below those thresholds, report anything causing damage or flooding — a report of half-inch hail is still useful for confirming where a storm is producing.
Report immediately
- Tornado, funnel cloud, or rotating wall cloud
- Hail of any size — give the size
- Wind damage: trees down, structural damage, power lines
- Flash flooding, water over roads, rapid stream rises
- Storm-related injuries or fatalities
Do not report
- Ordinary lightning and thunder
- Rain without flooding
- Scud clouds mistaken for rotation — watch before calling
- Anything you did not see yourself
What, where, when, who — and say whether it is measured or estimated.
“Quarter size hail, three miles south of Apex, at 4:15 PM, N0CALL. Measured.”
Distance and direction from a named town beats a street address — net control is plotting it on a map. Give the time the event happened, not the time you are calling. “Estimated” is a perfectly good answer and far better than a confident guess.
Hail size
Compare to a coin or ball, never a guess in inches.
| Pea | 0.25" |
| Marble | 0.50" |
| Penny | 0.75" |
| Nickel | 0.88" |
| Quarter | 1.00" |
| Half dollar | 1.25" |
| Ping pong ball | 1.50" |
| Golf ball | 1.75" |
| Hen egg | 2.00" |
| Tennis ball | 2.50" |
| Baseball | 2.75" |
| Grapefruit | 4.00" |
| Softball | 4.50" |
Quarter size (1.00") and above meets the severe criterion.
Estimating wind
By what it is doing, if you have no anemometer.
| 25–31 mph | Large branches moving, wires whistling |
| 32–38 mph | Whole trees in motion, walking into the wind is work |
| 39–54 mph | Twigs and small limbs breaking off |
| 55–72 mph | Shallow-rooted trees pushed over, chimneys and antennas damaged |
| 73–112 mph | Roof surfaces peeled, windows broken, mobile homes overturned |
| 113 mph+ | Roofs torn off, weak structures destroyed |
58 mph and above meets the severe criterion.
Where to check in
Central Carolina SKYWARN is the National Weather Service Raleigh designee for 18 central North Carolina counties, operating under NWS direction.
Listed by Central Carolina SKYWARN as the temporary primary until further notice.
Twenty-plus linked UHF repeaters across central and eastern North Carolina. Frequencies at carolina440.net.
Regular nets
- Information Net — Tuesdays at 9:15 PM, Primary repeater
Counties served — 18
Chatham · Durham · Edgecombe · Franklin · Granville · Halifax · Harnett · Johnston · Lee · Nash · Orange · Person · Sampson · Vance · Wake · Warren · Wayne · Wilson
This is the SKYWARN group's area, which is a subset of the NWS Raleigh forecast office's 31 counties. The alerts above are filtered to these 18.
Repeater details checked against Central Carolina SKYWARN on . Frequencies change — their site is authoritative. Forecast office: NWS Raleigh (RAH).
Before the season
- Take the training. NWS SKYWARN spotter classes are free, a couple of hours, and run by your local forecast office. They teach you what a wall cloud actually looks like versus the dozen things that resemble one.
- Program the frequencies in advance. Not during the warning.
- Have power that outlives the grid. A charged HT and a way to charge it again.
- Know your position. Distance and direction from a named town, ready to say without thinking.
- Spot from shelter. You are no use to anyone as a casualty, and a spotter who has to be rescued costs the county more than the report was worth.
Alerts come from the National Weather Service via a server-side proxy. Reporting criteria follow standard NWS spotter guidance — your local forecast office is authoritative, and its training supersedes anything on this page.