Your City at Work: Highlights and Hoorays May 8, 2024

SKYWARN Training Class at Southside Library Saturday, May 11

The Southside Library will host a SKYWARN training class this Saturday from 1-3 pm.

To obtain critical weather information, the National Weather Service (NWS) established SKYWARN® with partner organizations. SKYWARN® is a volunteer program with between 350,000 and 400,000 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 focus is reporting on severe local thunderstorms. In an average year, the United States experiences more than 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods and more than 1,000 tornadoes.

Since the program started in the 1970s, the 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. SKYWARN® storm spotters form the nation's first line of defense against severe weather.

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