SOUTH JERSEY (KYW Newsradio) — Meteorologists at the National Weather Service work around the clock to keep the public safe and informed about severe weather.
They can’t do it alone.
Their team, based in Mount Holly, New Jersey, relies on trained spotters to help identify severe weather, and they are looking to expand their roster of Delaware Valley-based spotters in the Skywarn program. They are hosting an online seminar for interested spotters at 7 p.m. Thursday night.
“Despite our best tools like radar and satellite, we don’t know for sure if something is happening like large hail or strong winds unless we get that report on the ground,” said Sarah Johnson, the Mount Holly office’s warning coordination meteorologist.
“The number one goal of the Skywarn program is to stay safe, so this is not a program to become a storm chaser or anything like that.”
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When weather watches are upgraded to warnings, Skywarn spotters become a new set of eyes and ears for meteorologists. Spotters travel into the field to find confirmed and reportable information about a storm or other weather event, the kind of data meteorologists at the office can’t gather at that moment.
The National Weather Service then uses the data as part of their safety alerts to the public, as well as in their archives for climatology databases.
Johnson said her team will teach you how to spot and report certain conditions like wind and hail, things hard to pick up with radar and satellite images.
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“It’s open to everybody, and I think the information is relevant to everybody,” Johnson said. “The primary goal of this is increasing the awareness of weather safety.”
Johnson said you don’t need any prior experience to qualify as a spotter, but participants need to be at least 18 years old. At the end of the seminar, participants will have the knowledge and tools needed to report hazardous weather in their area.
You can sign up for the online seminar here.
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