Sulphur Springs Police Chief Jason Ricketson reminds community residents interested in learning more about the weather that the annual SKYWARN Storm Spotter Training Class will be conducted virtually at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26, according to the National Weather Service and Sulphur Springs Police Department. The class is offered free for people in Delta, Fannin, Hopkins and Lamar Counties.
SKYWARN® is a citizen volunteer program with 350,000-400,000 trained severe weather spotters, citizens volunteers who help keep their local communities safe by providing timely and accurate reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service. The main responsibility of a SKYWARN® spotter is to identify and describe severe local storms.
In an average year, the the United States experiences more than 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods and more than 1,000 tornadoes. Alert storm spotters can provide information to the NWS and local emergency officials about things they are seeing that may not be detected on radar and other technologies, which allows the NWS to issue more timely and accurate warnings for tornadoes, severe storms and flash floods.
The training sessions are typically about two hours long and cover fundamental information that every spotter needs to know, with a focus on safety, identification of key weather features, and proper reporting procedures.
Anyone interested in becoming a storm spotter or learning more about weather patters in order to better prepare for storms and weather situations may attend the SKYWARN® Storm Spotter Training Class.
However, online registration is required to attend the webinar. Click this link to register.
The link and additional information can also be found on the National Weather Service website: www.weather.gov/fwd/skywarn.
