Many professional and amateur meteorologists spend a lot of time watching the skies when severe weather threatens. Storm chasing has become an obsession with some. Since you’re spending all that time cloud watching, you can also reap a very positive side benefit. The Skywarn Program is organized by the National Weather Service in cooperation with many local emergency management offices to establish a network of trained severe storm and tornado spotters. Even with the sophistication of the NEXRAD Doppler radar, nothing surpasses a reliable eyewitness report from a trained spotter of a tornado touch- down, large hail, or damaging winds. If you have an amateur radio license, so much the better. If you are interested in contributing your weather enthusiasm to the effort, contact your local NWS office or emergency management official, or check with the local amateur radio organizations. Training is provided and you will get to meet many fellow weather enthusiasts—and perhaps help save someone’s life.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 11:58 am and is filed under General, Technology, Science, Climate Change, Careers in Meteorology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.