National Weather Service offers severe storm program
As part of its area-wide weather preparedness campaign, the National Weather Service (NWS) in Fort Worth offers its Skywarn severe weather program to prepare residents with severe weather plans, how to recognize severe weather, explain how to become part of the severe weather warning system and answers many other questions.
The 2010 program will discuss thunderstorm formation, severe weather production, and features associated with severe storms. The presentation will also review tornado formation and behavior, non-threatening clues which may be mistaken for significant features, and safety when thunderstorms threaten. The program will discuss spotter operations and recommended reporting procedures. The two-hour presentation will be in multimedia format, featuring numerous pictures of storms and nearly 25 minutes of storm video clips.
“We have some new material in the 2010 spotter training program,” said Mark Fox, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the Fort Worth NWS Office. “We will present the information in the form of a checklist for the attendees to utilize. Most of the storm photos and video clips are different this year. We have reworked many of our graphics. We’ll have more identification cases, and we’ll discuss the operational aspects of storm spotters in detail.”
The fundamental purpose of the spotter training, and of the storm spotter network as a whole, remains unchanged. “We could not do our job as well as we do without storm spotters,” Fox said. “Radar is a great tool, but it only tells us part of a storm’s story. Spotter observations complement the data we use to analyze storms. The combination of spotter reports and radar data gives us the best possible picture of the storms and what’s going on inside them.”
The program is free and open to the public. “By coming to this program, you will learn a lot about thunderstorms,” Fox said. “Even if you don’t become an active storm spotter, you will learn about how storms work and the visual clues you can identify when storms are in your area. We will discuss severe weather safety tips. This will better prepare yourself and your family for the threats that storms pose.”
Local Skywarn programs are scheduled for:
March 20
Duncanville
Duncanville High School, 900 West Camp Wisdom
9:00AM-12 Noon(basic) - 1:30-4:00PM(adv)
March 27
Mansfield
St. Jude Church, 310 Graves St.
9:00AM-Noon
Additional Skywarn program times and locations can be found on the Fort Worth Forecast Office website.
