• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Old trivia time

Joined
Dec 4, 2003
Messages
3,411
A bit of trivia: any old-timey chasers remember this bizarre phrase and where it came from? The error was quite common, and some of you might be able to guess what caused it.

[Computer voice reads the following]
"Midland, 5000 scattered, 10000 broken, visibility 7, temperature 72, altimeter 2999. Remarks, hail and snow north."

I'll add an interesting story about this tomorrow.

Tim
 
I think the "hail and snow north" came from the decoder seeing "AS N" in the remarks and thinking it meant "hail and snow north" instead of "altostratus north", right?
 
Yes, absolutely, that's altostratus north.

This came from IVRS (Interim Voice Response System), which the FAA ran from about 1987 to 1990. In most major cities you could dial in, and through a touchtone system get observations by entering the station identifier on the keypad. Obviously this was great for those of us who did not have an Accu-Data subscription or immediate access to a computer. It was absolutely free, and I plotted many, many surface charts using IVRS.

Even on a chase you could stop in someplace like Amarillo or Wichita Falls and get the latest observations, with no computer. Great technology for the 1980s, and not well-known either.

Interestingly it had the FDUS winds aloft, which means you could plot a pseudo- forecast sounding. I stopped doing it pretty quickly, though, as I found the temperature curves in FDUS data were excessively smoothed.

Tim
 
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