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Haskell,
When I read your post I went and read up on the NWS SKYWARN Storm Spotter Program. Readers can click that link and read more about it if they wish. Then I gave you a call and after chatting with you I confirmed that you were asking about the Skywarn™ Recognition Day on December 1-2 (1900-1900).
For those of you that are not aware, the National Weather Service (NWS) and the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) put the recognition day program together to accomplish several goals: Recognition for those that participate in SKYWARN, to highlight the ongoing training that they wish participants to take and graphically displaying where storm spotters certified by SKYWARN are geographically located, to name a few.
For those that are currently SKYWARN certified you may be interested in clicking the link to the official 2023 Skywarn Recognition Day Spotter Check-In page. Once you have logged in you will be able to obtain a SKYWARN Recognition Day Certificate on 12/3. And yes, they spell it Skywarn and SKYWARN interchangeably on their site.
For those that are not SKYWARN certificated I started digging into how to address getting the training. There is an online presence called COMET MetEd that does the training – SKYWARN® Spotter Training. On that web page they do say “…many National Weather Service (NWS) offices require training in addition to this online course.” To address that point I have reached out to the Fort Worth NWS office and asked them if there are any 100% online resources that meet their criteria. Do you need this training? You do if you want to be a SKYWARN certified weather observer. If you do not know the objective difference between a funnel cloud or a tornado or the accurate manner in which to report hail sizes, you too would benefit.
The Fort Worth office of the National Weather Service has conducted training in Paris in January a number of times. So, I have also asked if they have a date planned in January 2024 where they will again conduct that training in Paris. I have previously noted as little as just a few days heads up on these training sessions. Here we are just days from December 1st and I could not find anything about a January NWS SKYWARN course in Paris. It would be nice if the Club could start advertising the date several weeks out, so hopefully they reply to me with a date. I will let everyone know if they do.
73
Phillip Beall (W5EBC)
All,
Soon I will try and get a SKYWARN page up on our site so that anyone with any questions about that program, upcoming training opportunities, etc., will have a “one stop shop” for information on the topic.
Today I receive a reply from Jennifer Dunn, the “Warning Coordination Meteorologist” with National Weather Service Fort Worth. She answered some very specific questions I had posed. For brevity sake I will post the edited information as a Q&A below:
Q: Is the Comet MetEd SKYWARN® Spotter Training course certification one that fully qualifies a ham operator to the Fort Worth National Weather Service office standards? Here is a link to that program: https://www.meted.ucar.edu/education_training/course/23
A: Yes, taking the Comet online course does qualify someone as “Spotter”. We do tell those who have finished the online Comet course that they can identify themselves as a Trained Spotter to our office. We still encourage them to attend a local SKYWARN class to learn more about our local hazards and reporting methods.
Q: If the Comet course above does not fully qualify someone to the Fort Worth NWS standards, is there an online only option to get fully qualified?
A: We do offer online SKYWARN classes, usually in February and March. These classes will be posted with the rest of our in-person schedule by the end of the December. We do offer a certificate with the online course. We also have past recordings of SKYWARN classes on the SKYWARN webpage mentioned above for review, but they don’t include the certificate.
Q: We know the Fort Worth NWS office has done some January SKYWARN classes in Paris previously. Do you have a date set for January 2024 so that we can start advertising it to our Club members?
A: Lamar County will not be hosting a class in 2024. Hopkins, Fannin, and Grayson are in the rotation to host classes in 2024. Again, the schedule of classes won’t be posted until late December.
So, there you have it. You MAY take the online Comet course at the link above and then consider yourself to be a storm “spotter”. They recommend that you take one of their courses to complement that certification and each Spring they offer their own online course. Finally, Lamar County will not be getting a lecture in 2024. When we know the dates for the Hopkins, Fannin and Grayson lectures we will pass that information along.
73
Phillip
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