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SKYWARN and weather spotting
Reporting severe weather.
Reporting severe weather.
SKYWARN is the US National Weather Service's volunteer storm-spotter program. Trained spotters report what severe weather is actually doing where they are: hail, damaging wind, tornadoes, flooding. Anyone can be trained, but amateurs are a natural fit because their radios still work when phones and power fail, and because they already know how to run a net. It is run by the weather service, not by an amateur organisation, and unlike RACES it does not need civil-defense certification.
Radar is the forecaster's main tool, but it has limits. A radar beam travels straight while the Earth curves away beneath it, so far from the radar the beam passes above the lowest part of a storm, the part that reaches the ground. Radar sees precipitation and its motion at the height of the beam, not necessarily the hail or damaging wind at street level. A spotter on the ground supplies ground truth: what is really happening, and when. Forecasters combine the two when deciding whether to warn.
Say what you saw, where and when, in plain words, without guessing.
| Item | Example |
|---|---|
| What | hail, wind damage, funnel cloud, flooding, snow |
| How big or how bad | hail compared with a coin or ball; whether limbs or whole trees are down |
| Where | an exact place: nearest road crossing, direction and distance from a known landmark |
| When | the time you saw it, not the time you reported it |
Report only what you observe yourself. If you did not see a tornado, do not call it one. A clear "hail the size of a quarter, at Main and Fifth, five minutes ago" is far more useful than a dramatic guess.