| A storm comes into Castle Country over Pinnacle Peak earlier this fall. |
The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City will be providing a 30 to 45 minute multimedia storm spotter training session during the Carbon/Emery County Awareness-Preparedness Fair. This session is free of charge, and complete with exciting weather video.
The emphasis of the training will be on teaching skills which allow storm spotters to identify severe storms which may pose a risk to life and/or property.
Severe weather events in Utah range from high winds, snow and blizzards, to hail and even tornadoes. In addition to teaching attendees to identify severe weather before it occurs, valuable safety lessons will also be taught, aimed at keeping yourself, your family, and your property safe during hazardous weather events.
After completing the training session, attendees will have met the requirements to become an official National Weather Service Storm Spotter, and will have the opportunity to register as a Storm Spotter.
Weather spotters provide an invaluable service to their community and to the National Weather Service. The information they provide helps their community by assisting local public safety officials in making critical decisions aimed at protecting lives and property.
During life-threatening weather events such as flash flooding, these real-time reports from weather spotters are used to help warn others in their community, as well as those neighboring communities which may be in harm’s way.
In addition to aiding National Weather Service forecasters in determining which storms are severe, spotter reports also provide valuable information to people in the path of a potentially deadly storm.
Ground truth reports from spotters help to give credibility to the warnings issued by the National Weather Service. This ground-truth information helps motivate people that are in harms way to take action to protect themselves and their property.