Martin County SKYWARN will be hosting a National Weather Service (NWS) SKYWARN® Spotter Training Class at the Martin County Emergency Operations Center (EOC), 800 S.E. Monterey Road in Stuart. The free NWS class, taught by an NWS meteorologist, will be held Aug. 8th from 10:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Space is limited, so register now.
At the conclusion of this educational training session, participants will be able to recognize local precursors to severe weather such as storm cloud formations that lead to severe weather and be introduced to weather maps. Participants will be provided NWS SKYWARN Spotter ID cards and a special NWS phone number to report certain observed severe weather parameters and/or storm damage to the office in Melbourne. Participant phone numbers will be placed into the NWS database and they will occasionally receive phone calls inquiring about severe weather heading to their locations, as detected by weather radar.
ABOUT SKYWARN®: SKYWARN® is a volunteer program with nearly 300,000 trained severe weather spotters. These volunteers help keep their local communities safe by providing timely and accurate reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service.
Although SKYWARN® spotters provide essential information for all types of weather hazards, the main responsibility of a SKYWARN® Spotter is to identify and describe severe local storms. In the average year, 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods and more than 1,000 tornadoes occur across the United States. Since Information provided by SKYWARN® Spotters coupled with Doppler radar technology, improved satellite and other data, has enabled NWS to issue more timely and accurate warnings for tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and flash floods. For information on local SKYWARN® go to NWS page: https://www.srh.noaa.gov/mlb/?n=skywarn
The Martin County SKYWARN® Organization is an all-volunteer public service group dedicated to providing local severe weather information to the National Weather Service and the Amateur Radio Emergency Service personnel via phone and radio communications. Learn more about the Martin County SKYWARN organization or contact us by visiting our website at: https://www.mcaraweb.com/skywarn.html
About Ham Radio: During Hurricanes Jeanne and Frances, Amateur Radio was occasionally the ONLY way people could communicate and many local and regional “hams” provided backup communications. When trouble is brewing, ham radio people are often the first to provide critical information and provide emergency communications for thousands of state and local emergency response events.
For more information on local Ham (Amateur) Radio, visit: www.wx4mc.org
