National Weather Service-Storm Spotter Program
The National Weather Service (NWS) is making sure that citizens across the country have the ability to identify hazardous weather by offering their SKYWARN Storm Spotter Program. This program is available to anyone that would like to become a spotter or has the responsibility of protecting others like public service employees, hospitals, and churches. This is a volunteer program that has trained approximately 350,000-400,000 citizens since the program’s inception in the 1970’s. The primary goal of this program is to help citizens accurately identify and describe severe local storms. Participating users will also be able to learn the basics of thunderstorm development, fundamentals of storm structure, identifying potential sever weather features, information to report, how to report information and basic sever weather safety.
In an average year, the United States experiences more than 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods and more than 1,000 tornadoes. Knowing these statistics and recognizing the changing of seasons, the NWS is encouraging citizens to utilize their training in order to provide better safety procedures and awareness to your community. The more citizens that are trained in storm spotting and report it, the quicker the NWS can create an alert and potentially save lives. The training is free and usually last about 2 hours.
Action Steps:
1. Find out about a class in your area here
2. Learn more about the Storm Spotter Program here
3.If you are aware of incoming inclement weather, always remain vigilant and be prepared for the associated cascading events of the potential hazard.