Outdoor sorts become weather geeks by necessity, if not already born that.
Whether a birder, angler, hunter, hiker or paddler, you learn weather forecasts, conditions, apps and radars intimately.
I expanded to becoming a trained spotter about eight years ago. Trained spotters report severe weather to the National Weather Service.
I take a refresher spotter training annually, in part for the fun of being in a room with a hundred other weather geeks. But this year all spotter sessions are virtual.
Mike Bardou, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Chicago/Romeoville office, acknowledged that many others also take annual sessions and explained the change.
“We’re trying something a little different this year in an effort to reach a larger audience to raise weather awareness and emphasize weather safety and preparedness,” he emailed. “Thus the in-person presentations that we have collaborated with our county emergency management partners to conduct will be more focused on hazardous weather that impacts the local area, how to prepare for and maximize safety during such events, and how to stay up on the latest forecast information to best support decisions that people need to make to be safe.”
Those in-person Community Weather Preparedness Trainings begin next month.
The more advanced spotter trainings will be virtual, as Bardou put it, “These could also be seen as the follow on or next step for someone who attends the weather awareness and preparedness sessions above and wants to further focus on storm spotting and reporting and have a more in depth knowledge of thunderstorms in particular.
“This season will be a bit of a test to see how effective this approach is. We’re hoping that this will be a step forward for us in building a Weather Ready Nation.”
Details and schedules are at weather.gov/lot/spotter_talk.
