Severe Weather Report Criteria

The Weather Forecast Office in Green Bay (WFO GRB) has 22 counties in its County Warning Area (CWA), and it is also responsible for the northwest part of Lake Michigan, including the Bay of Green Bay. That is a considerable amount of territory, and a variety of weather events may occur at any given moment. Information and timing are critical in our communications system, and certain weather events are more important than others.

Below is a List of Severe Criteria, in their order of priority. Liasion stations should order their reports from 1 - 7 accordingly, and yield to other liasion stations who have higher-priority traffic.

Liasions should also remember the Location, Time, Condition, Station format: LTCS

Important Notice

The meterological staff reserves the right to ask for reports from the field that are not usually considered severe, or may not even be on this list. Our nets remain flexible to their needs, on a storm by storm basis.

Severe Weather reports that Liasians / Relays should report immediately:

1) Tornado / Waterspout on the ground / water

2) Funnel Cloud aloft

3) Wall Clouds (indicate rotating or not)

4) Winds greater than 50 MPH

Damage caused by winds
Measured wind speed, or estimated?
If trees down, how large, and were they alive?

5) Flooding or Flash Flooding

Major structural Damage / evacuations
River banks broken and/or water out of banks
Roads, Bridges, or railroads washed out

6) Hail (size of largest stone, how deep, please no "marble" descriptions)

7) Storm Damage

Parked vehicles blown/rolled over
Windows blown in by the force of winds
If trees are down, were they alive? A few trees, or a large amount?

Reports that SHOULD NOT BE Made

During a severe weather event, the PASS net may be quite busy handling materials of a critical time nature. Therefore, the following items should not be made. These are common mistakes made to the PASS Net:

1) Do not report local siren activity. The PASS Nets collect weather information, not civil defense information. Please do not report a siren going off... the siren will not harm anyone.

2) Do not report materials heard on a local police scanner. The police / fire / highway departments have their own link into the WFO GRB. Your report from a police scanner may cause a duplicate report, causing errors in the data, and will waste time.

3) Do not report via email or the telephone any reports that you made over the radio. Again, we do not want to duplicate the reports received into the database. If you need to follow-up to a previous report, please use LTCS and clearly describe the initial report.

Severe Weather Report Criteria