The 2007 storm season is just around the corner. Are you ready? Is a
severe weather plan in place for you, your family, and your workplace?
Do you know how to recognize the clues that suggest damaging wind, large
hail, or a tornado is possible? Do you want to become part of the severe
weather warning system in your county?
As part of its area-wide weather
preparedness campaign, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth will
answer these and other questions in a storm spotter training program on
Wednesday, February 7, 2007, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM. The program will be
held in Gainesville at the Civic Center, and will be co-sponsored by the
City of Gainesville & Cooke County Emergency Management.
The 2007 program will emphasize three fundamental concepts for severe
weather events: observing, reporting, and safety. The program will
discuss thunderstorm formation, severe weather production, and features
associated with severe storms. The program will also review tornado
formation and behavior, storm spotting and reporting techniques, and
safety when thunderstorms threaten. The two-hour presentation will be in
multimedia format, featuring numerous pictures of storms and nearly 25
minutes of storm video clips.
“We have some new material in the 2007 spotter training program”, said
Gary Woodall, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the Fort Worth NWS
Office. “We’ve added some updated diagrams, and some different photos
and videos. We’ll discuss some evolving methods for making reports, and
we’ll cover communications procedures in more detail than in past years”.
The fundamental purpose of the presentation - and of the storm spotter
network as a whole - remains unchanged. “We could not do our job as well
as we do without storm spotters”, Woodall stated. “Radar is a great
tool, but it only tells us part of a storm’s story. Spotter observations
complement the electronic data we use to analyze storms. The combination
of spotter reports and radar data gives us the best possible picture of
the storms and what’s going on inside them."
The program is free and open to anyone that would like to attend. “This
program will teach you a lot about thunderstorms and how they produce
severe weather,” Woodall said. “Even if you don’t become an active storm
spotter, you will learn the visual clues to identify when storms are in
the area. We will discuss severe weather safety tips. This will better
prepare yourself and your family for the threats that storms pose”.
The Cooke County severe weather program is one of over 40 that the Fort
Worth NWS Office will conduct between January and March 2007. The
National Weather Service in Fort Worth provides forecasts, warnings, and
weather services for 46 counties in north and north-central Texas. For
more information on severe weather and the National Weather Service,
visit the Fort Worth Forecast Office’s website.
|
