Hur­ri­cane Season
The Atlantic Hur­ri­cane Sea­son offi­cial­ly runs from 1st June to 30 Novem­ber each year and Trop­i­cal Storm Alex has become the first ‘named’ storm of this year. Ama­teur Radio con­tin­ues to play a part in gath­er­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion for the weath­er and emer­gency ser­vices each year.
Radio Ama­teurs in Region 1 are remind­ed that the fol­low­ing fre­quen­cies may be in use by nets in North and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca to track and deal with the con­se­quences of these severe weath­er events. It is pos­si­ble for Region 1 ama­teurs to cause unin­ten­tion­al QRM to these nets so please lis­ten care­ful­ly if oper­at­ing near these frequencies.
14.300 MHz is used by the Mar­itime Mobile Ser­vice Net dai­ly and as well as han­dling traf­fic from Mar­itime Mobile Sta­tions, also gath­ers weath­er reports from mar­itime sta­tions to assist forecasters.
14.325 MHz is used by the Hur­ri­cane Watch Net and the net is estab­lished when­ev­er it appears that a storm may affect the US main­land. The net gath­ers weath­er infor­ma­tion and links to the Amer­i­can Nation­al Hur­ri­cane Centre.
14.265 MHz is used by the Sal­va­tion Army Team Emer­gency Radio Net­work (SATERN ) pro­vides Health and Wel­fare traf­fic links for those in affect­ed areas as well as sup­port­ing the Sal­va­tion Army Dis­as­ter relief response should a hur­ri­cane strike.
Fre­quen­cies used in Cuba: 7.045, 7.080, 7.110 MHz 3.740 MHz.
Fre­quen­cies used in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca: Red Cen­tro Amer­i­cana 7.090 and 3.750MHz.
Guatemala: 7.075 MHz. Nicaragua: 7.098 MHz. Mex­i­co (FMRE) 3.690 and 7.060 MHz.
Cuba and Mex­i­co co-oper­ate with long dis­tance relays on 40m when prop­a­ga­tion makes this possible.
Local emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions groups may also acti­vate if a hur­ri­cane approach­es their area and those fre­quen­cies would be announced at the time.