Skywarn Script

While a skywarn system is not yet fully operational in west central Minnesota, I still wanted a way to know what was happening.  The local NWS office has a Yahoo Groups mailing list for Skywarn notification, but my "spam" seems to go up whenever I use it.  After deleting the Yahoo account, I decided to write a very simple script to parse the NWS web page Skywarn notification, sending the results to my cellphone.  This BASH script (updated 1 July 2012) should work without too many changes on just about any modern Unix system, and perhaps other operating systems.

On my system, I run this script once an hour between 8 AM and 9 PM, and send the results to my cellphone.  My provider, Straight Talk, permits me to send and receive an unlimited number of incoming e-mail messages via SMS, at no cost.  Check your cellphone provider for a similar service.