DALTON —
A storm that made the ground appear to be snow-covered in a section of Tunnel Hill last Friday served as a reminder for the importance of a Weather Spotter Training Class held here three days later.
“For the ones who don’t know or didn’t get to experience it, there was a small portion of the Tunnel Hill area that had over a foot of hail Friday,” Whitfield Emergency Services Director Jeffrey Putnam told class members, “so this is a good time to be having this class now that we’ve seen what kind of weather we can have.”
Putnam said the downburst caused about $250,000 worth of damage to structures in a path about three miles long and about a mile wide at its broadest, thanks to winds up to 70 mph.
“It was a good little awakening point there,” he said.
The two sessions of the training, sponsored by Whitfield County Emergency Services and the National Weather Service and held in the Whitfield County Health Department training room on Monday night, drew 41 participants from a combination of employees from Sheriff’s Office, Health Department, Building and Zoning, Whitfield EMS, Dalton Fire Department, the Whitfield, Murray and Gordon HAM Radio Clubs and area citizens.
“You are a big help to us at the National Weather Service as well as to your local community because by being able to see what’s occurring on the ground, it helps us out tremendously to be able to put that information into the body of our warnings and statements we send out,” said Barry Gooden, National Weather Service instructor.
The reports of volunteer storm spotters are basically “a follow-up to what we think is going on,” Gooden said. Radar is limited to gathering information from the air, “and from that information we have to assume by looking at the different signatures of radar, what’s actually happening on the ground,” he said.
“So it helps us out tremendously by being able to say this is the ground truth. This is what radar is really seeing, and this is what’s actually happening on the ground for those that might possibly be in harm’s way or a lot more additional information for those on the ground,” Gooden said.
Spotters’ eyes help provide additional information about the storm “and what we think will lead or could lead to severe weather. The purpose of this training is to give you a little idea of things to look for, things to try to get a better understanding of, and some things we need or don’t need.”
To obtain critical weather information, NOAA’s National Weather Service, part of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, established SKYWARN with partner organizations. SKYWARN is a volunteer program with nearly 290,000 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 main responsibility of SKYWARN spotters is to identify and describe local severe storms.
In the average year, 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods, and more than 1,000 tornadoes occur throughout the United States.
Local News
March 21, 2010
Storm Spotters help weather forecasters
41 attend training classes
- Local News
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Kiwanis Club to try new fundraiser
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