“There's
a tornado forming near Agra, Kansas!”
“I'm
experiencing high winds in the Tejon Pass, on the Grapevine, here in
California!”
“It's
been snowing steadily all day here in Dillon, Montana, but now it's
hailing. Big time!”
These
are the sort of radio reports that volunteers often send to the
National Weather Service. With volunteer weather spotters equipped
with ham radios and living all over the U.S., the NWS can establish
and verify weather warnings. And weather warnings help all of us.
It's
not just hurricane and tornado warnings. There are flash flood
warnings, high winds warnings, snowfall and hailstorm warnings. I've
even heard warnings that lightning is expected with a particular
storm.
This
is a day that celebrates contributions to public safety made by all
the volunteer weather spotters.
Does
it have to be ham radio?
I
would think that nowadays Twitter and Facebook would be a valuable
source of extreme weather information. It turns out that about 30
thousand people follow NWS on Twitter to get weather info and
warnings, and we the public can use Twitter, Facebook,
computers, ham radio, and telephones to report local weather
conditions to the NWS, too. For example, here is the NWS page
for Gaylord, MI, telling how to make a report in these various ways.
Also
on this date:
