STORM2K

Attended this year's SKYWARN training class here on a day of about 96 degrees and sunny. An overflow group of about 60 or so attending. Nice turnout.

Here in Arizona, SKYWARN training is more about dust storms, microbursts, and street and wash flooding than tornadoes. We average 2 a year in Arizona, we were told...and those are generaly F0 or F1 (My wife is happy about that!)

Didn't know if anyone else who went to SKYWARN training this year had a chance to pick up a free 4" diameter rain gauge. They gave them away at our session. They sell for $35 or $40.

Anyway, I'm official again here for the upcoming monsoon season and beyond.

I went to our local Spotter training... its my 'refresher' course... we didn't get any special presents

I couldn't attend ours this year.

I have a question if anyone knows the answer. Some Skywarn spotters I know, not here in Houston, have numbers they were given after completing the course. Is this something each individual NWS decides on or should we have been given one?

ID numbers or the local NWS phone number?

Congratulations Steve and Shannon!

David, I got a laminated card with my name, spotter ID #,
and, expiration date, with the number to my local NWS
office listed on it (a 1-800 number), about 2 weeks after I
attended the class. You should have gotten something to
show your certification!

I got a certificate that says I completed three hours of training. It is signed by the met who did the class and says it is from NWS, but that is all I got. No number on it or card later. We did get contact numbers with our info. I even emailed him about it once and got no response. However, they have taken my reports when I call.

David, I have a spotter ID # plus an unlisted number to call to provide reports.

After the meeting today, all new SKYWARN members got numbers today.

I think it is more of a clerical need than an actual one...since rarely do I have or remember my number when I call in a report.

We also have a pretty nice SKYWARN website to work with here. Check it out at

http://www.arizona-skywarn.org/

Very nice site indeed. Ours is nothing at all like that.

Here in Missouri, they don't want to see you unless you have a "ham" shack already set up and operating.

What possession and operation of an HF-VHF-UHF-single-sideband setup has to do with spotting, I have NO clue.

Some NWS offices have Ham Spotter Nets with the Ham operators taking care of the reports and data flow. I am a ham myself but the TUS office prefers phoned in reports. At the TUS office, they have the spotter numbers entered into a position Library so when the spotter calls in and gives their number, their location shows up on the radar display. Since I also storm chase, many of my reports are from the field so I give the location of where I am at. My van has a wind sensor mounted on it and will have a recording rainguage on it this Summer as well. They gave out the rainguages at the Sierra Vista meeting which had about 50 people showing up but I already have one of those plus a tipping bucket guage.

Steve