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Highlands Today
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Want To Be A Weather Spotter?
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Published: July 15, 2008
SEBRING - In conjunction with Highlands County Emergency Management, the National Weather Service is offering weather spotter training classes on Wednesday, July 23 at the Emergency Operations Center.
Basic training is from 9:30 a.m. until 10:30 a.m., and advanced training is from 10:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m.
The basic training will focus on severe weather in Highlands County, weather safety, thunderstorm formation and severe weather cloud identification and reporting.
The advanced training will feature a discussion on sea breeze fronts, lightning patterns, visualizing instability and hurricanes.
The National Weather Service will issue a warning for only one or both of the following reasons: Doppler radar detects severe weather or SKYWARN spotters report severe weather.
SKYWARN History
Americans live in the most severe weather prone country on Earth.
Each year, Americans cope with an average of 10,000 thunderstorms, 2,500 floods, 1,000 tornadoes, as well as an average of six deadly hurricanes.
Some 90 percent of all presidentially declared disasters are weather-related, leading to around 500 deaths per year and nearly $14 billion in damage.
What can you do to help protect yourself, your family and neighbors? Consider becoming a trained SKYWARN Spotter.
A trained spotter knows the weather threats in Florida, safety rules and visual clues regarding thunderstorm strength.
Participants can attend the training even if they do not want to be an official spotter.
SKYWARN is sponsored by the National Weather Service, consisting of trained weather spotters who provide reports of severe and hazardous weather to help in the warning process.
SKYWARN spotter reports provide vital "ground truth" to the NWS. The reports serve the NWS mission of protecting life and property in three ways: assist in present and future warning decisions, confirm hazardous weather detected by NWS radar, and provide verification information which can be used for future research efforts.
SKYWARN is a volunteer public service for those 18 years or older.
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