Advanced Skywarn training...?

[Jake Orosi]

I attended the local training session here last night. It went pretty much as I expected from reading the NWS's "Basic Spotter's Field Guide". The presentation was actually very nice, and included some good video of various types of severe weather, highlighting for instance the difference between wandering scud and wall- or funnel-clouds. Not bad...but again, very basic.

I noticed when planning to attend class that the Skywarn calendar listed, simply, "Skywarn training classes". I assumed these were the "basic" classes, and it turned out that they did cover the material in the "Basic" guide. But I was under the impression - first from the fact that there was an "Advanced Spotter Field Guide", and later from reading references to them here - that there were other, "advanced" classes that discussed weather and spotting in more depth and detail. Not seeing any such classes on the calendar, I figured the dates of these weren't generally published and information about them would be given out at this "basic" training class.

At the end of the class, I had intended to ask the met about this, since he had made no mention of any advanced classes during the lecture. But I overheard someone else asking the same thing first. The met's reply was, essentially, there were no other classes: this was "it", the spotter training class.

Sooo...I seem to have either made a wrong assumption, read something incorrectly, or been misinformed at some point. Is the "Advanced Spotter's Field Guide" meant to be a stand-alone training aid? In it there are references to an "Advanced Training Slide Set". I assumed this meant there would be some kind of an advanced class?

 

[Tim Shriver]

Each weather forecast office does things differently. I am not sure why, but they do.
I would look to other WFO's website under their Skywarn section to see what each offers.

I know that KMKX does offer an advanced spotter class and it is on their website.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/?n=spotters

Scroll down and look under "Slide Shows".

Tim

 

[Jake Orosi]

Thanks for the link - lots of tasty stuff there.

I have no problem with reading all this simply for its own sake - after all, I love weather - but I suppose I'm really just kind of out of luck as far as formal advanced training goes? I could go to some other region and sit through an advanced class that they offer, but such training wouldn't matter to or be recognized by my WFO it guess.

 

[Chip Redmond]

Advanced training also varies with WFO as well. If you are looking to attend one I know that both RLX and ILN offer one or two through the year. Yea, they could be a drive, but they are pretty interesting and it gives you an opportunity to network with other weather geeks.

RLX's tend to focus on flooding and looks at a few past events. They also do a storm survey one, but I have never attended (though I suppose it would be the same as differentiating between tornado and straightline wind damage, which I have done with them before). You can watch their site for updated schedules:http://www.erh.noaa.gov/rlx/skywarn/spottrain.html

ILN's tend to focus on case studies based around tornadoes and severe storms. I went to one a few years ago and it was well attended and they did a great job, going into synoptic and mesoscale details of the event. You can watch their page here:http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/iln/training.php


Hope that helps.

Chip

 

[James Gustina]

Just to echo what Chip said, I'd highly recommend the ILN advanced class (the one in Dayton this year was superb). They usually hold the advanced class in early March either in Cincinnati or Dayton depending on the year.

 

[Jake Orosi]

Thank you gents, I will look into it.

 

[Keith Hosman]

IWX (Northern Indiana) WFO offers an Advanced training but they have already held it this year. The IMO Skywarn group does a lot of the legwork for puting the training on.