NWS Albuquerque Amateur Radio SKYWARN program

The NWS Albuquerque office, located on the west side of the Albuquerque Sunport airport, has both 2M and 70CM amateur radio. Vanity call WX5ABQ (WX weather, region 5, and ABQ international identifier for Albuquerque airport and NWS office) is normally used whenever the station is on the air.

For SKYWARN, we primarily use the MegaLink repeater system which provides coverage into most of the NWS ABQ office county warning area or the northern two-thirds of New Mexico. We may also use several of the Upper Rio FM Society repeaters (146.940 or 146.900) as well as other local repeaters from near Santa Fe (147.200 or 147.300), Los Alamos (145.190), Bernalillo-Rio Rancho (147.100), Belen (146.700) and Socorro (146.680) whenever severe weather threatens along the Rio Grande Valley and over west central New Mexico.  

Although we do have a number of staff licensed to operate the WX5ABQ amateur station, there are times when these licensed forecasters are not on duty or else other duties prevent us from monitoring the amateur radio. A guest operator may then be called out to assist. If you can't raise us direct on the radio, you may check station status or request station activation with a phone call to the toll-free SKYWARN number 1‑888‑386‑7637 or via the Upper Rio FM auto-patch using codes 365 or 9365 (after hours emergency phone patch).

Spotters can contribute snow and road condition reports as well as heavy rain and severe thunderstorm reports. We encourage both home location reporting and reports from spotters that may be traveling across the state.

Have you designated a central contract point within a amateur spotter group? It's usually best to have one to two folks designated as primary group contact points. This helps us request spotter activation and then manage reports during an event. It's left up to the group to decide whether to communicate as a group on a local repeater or simplex and then have someone relay reports to us via MegaLink, other repeater or by phone. However, please let us know which frequency the group uses so we can monitor if possible.

Keith Hayes, KC5KH

Warning Coordination Meteorologist

NWS Albuquerque (505) 243-0702