What is SKYWARN?SKYWARN
is a concept developed in the early 1970s that was intended to promote a cooperative effort between the National Weather Service
and communities. The emphasis of the effort is often focused on the storm spotter, an individual who takes a position near
their community and reports wind gusts, hail size, rainfall, and cloud formations that could signal a developing tornado.
Another part of SKYWARN is the receipt and effective distribution of National Weather Service information.
The organization of spotters and the distribution of warning information may
lies with the National Weather Service or with an emergency management agency within the community. This agency could
be a police or fire department, or often is an emergency management/service group (what people might still think of as civil
defense groups). This varies across the country however, with local national weather service offices taking the lead in some
locations, while emergency management takes the lead in other areas.
SKYWARN is not a club or organization, however, in some areas where Emergency
Management programs do not perform the function, people have organized SKYWARN groups that work independent of a parent government
agency and feed valuable information to the National Weather Service. While this provides the radar meteorologist with much
needed input, the circuit is not complete if the information does not reach those who can activate sirens or local broadcast
systems.
SKYWARN spotters are not by definition "Storm Chasers". While their functions
and methods are similar, the spotter stays close to home and usually has ties to a local agency. Storm chasers often cover
hundreds of miles a day. The term Storm Chaser covers a wide variety of people. Some are meteorologists doing specific research
or are gathering basic information (like video) for training and comparison to radar data. Others chase storms to provide
live information for the media, and others simply do it for the thrill.
Storm Spotting and Storm Chasing is dangerous and should not be done without
proper training, experience and equipment.
The National Weather Service conducts spotter training classes across the
United States, and your local National Weather Service office should be consulted as to when the next class will be held.
