By Stephen Smoot
“The information you learn could help you save a life, possibly your own, or your family, friends, and community members,” says Rick Gillespie, Pendleton County Emergency Services coordinator, about the SKYWARN class coming up next month.
“It is set for 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 6, at the Pendleton County Board of Education Conference Room at 125 North Main Street, Franklin,” Gillespie reported, adding that “class should last approximately two hours.”
According to Francis Kredensor of the National Weather Service, the program exists “to help train our partners and members of the general public in two key areas: severe weather safety, and how to safely and reliably observe and report impactful weather to the NWS.”
Instructors conform SKYWARN classes to local and regional conditions typical to that area’s NWS Weather Forecast Offices. Kredensor stated, “That allows training to be tailored to the hazards that are more prevalent in a particular area, and ensures that trained spotters know some of the local NWS employees who receive and use their reports.”
Weather forecasting in the era of computer models and artificial intelligence still cannot work without the human element. “We have some great remote observing platforms, but they all have weaknesses,” Kredesnor shared, adding that, “reliable high quality surface observations, like those taken at airports, are widely scattered and thus it’s easy for impactful weather events like thunderstorms to pass between them.”
Additionally, satellites cannot show the internal structures of developing storms. Radar works best at shorter distances where the beam can reach the most vital parts of a storm cloud to evaluate. At longer distances, the beam goes to higher elevations relative to the curvature of the earth.
Where a radar station at Charleston can “see” the internal workings of a storm cloud a few thousand feet up, by the time the beam travels 120 miles (the distance to Clarksburg), it can only return information about activity 10,000 feet off the ground. This creates more problems in winter where conditions do not normally result in storm clouds rising to that elevation.
Trained SKYWARN spotters report what Kredensor calls “ground truth.” No digital or mechanical device can equal the competence and capability of trained and focused human eyes and minds.
The National Weather Service welcomes reports from anyone, but “we tend to give a bit more weight” to those trained by the program. Meteorologists and other officials rely on spotter reports when, for example, they need to decide if a developing storm requires a special warning.
Reports after the fact also have strong influence over NWS decisions. “We use them internally to gauge how well we are doing,” Kredesnor said, also stating that “the reports can be used in writing storm data summaries that then become part of the ‘official’ climate record of the United States.”
Additionally, FEMA, insurance companies, and others cite these reports to assess post event damage.
Gillespie adds that local emergency responses also rely heavily on the accurate information provided. He explains that SKYWARN “assists us by giving us trained eyes, providing real-time alerts and factual information. It allows us to respond in a more detailed, prepared way.”
In one incarnation or another, the SKYWARN program dates back to the 1950s. The United States Weather Bureau, as NWS was once known, forged partnerships with amateur radio clubs to create a “weather net.” Eventually the federal government invited any interested individual to participate.
