Of course Andrew, you assume that none of us have ever done that. I've spoken at some of the spotter meetings, but outside of that I have offered, many times to various EM, law enforcement, fire dept, etc to come out and give them some more specialized training.
Would you like to guess what I was told in every case?
"The National Weather Service already comes out and gives us training."
Yep, they feel that is enough.
I second David on this and I know of a few of his attempts first hand. I guess some things in my inquiry here was lost in translation, that's okay. But, while seeing reports from "that guy that we always hear on spotter nets" on the Spotter Network making really ignorant reports is also something that bugs me (as well as most of us) - it's not the main issue that I am concerned with. My focus here was how we could approach LEO/Fire and get through exactly what David has stated above - "NWS already provides us with spotter training".
I'm concerned about the "statistic" of 1 storm spotter death per year now for the past two years. And, not so much about seeing the 15mph high wind gust report.
SKYWARN is a grassroots effort. NWS didn't come up with the idea - but they have adopted it and it's a great effort that allows them a vehicle to get training into community centers. But in my opinion, its not enough if storm spotters are getting killed. Obviously I understand that situations just happen and even the best trained spotters could get killed and I don't know the level of training that the deceased had participated in either. But the first rule to any response is to make sure YOU survive because you're no good to anyone in the form of assistance if you're dead. And there were other spotters/chasers on both these storms that didn't place themselves in the situations and were later available to help with the initial response/rescue phase.
I think there are basically 2 types of storm spotters. Those who enjoy it and want to do it as a hobby. And those who do it because it's a requirement of their professional careers. It's the latter that will find themselves sitting on a dark county road at 3 am when the former decide it's too dark and go home, and it's the latter that (so far) have been fatally injured.
So if you were asked by someone who had influence over that second type of spotter on how they could improve their storm spotting/weather decision programs, what would your recommendations be?
For example - this would be mine...
A police officer typically has with them a radio and cell phone and their first line of contact is a dispatcher or 911 center. During severe weather events the chain of communication in small rural communities normally has to be routed through a dispatcher from NWS then relayed to the "spotter" and vice versa.
Since we have such great technology these days allowing any home or office PC to have more instant information available to users than WFOs had just a few years ago - why not train dispatchers on subjects like "basic" radar interpretation and put GR Level II in front of them. I know its a vast subject but there are some common echo signatures that can be easily identified with minimal effort - they don't have to identify velocity couplets, etc.. but just seeing a where a storm's rear flank is on radar along with the "spotters" GPS position on-screen might allow the dispatcher to shave a few seconds off from touching base with their spotter and requesting him/her to find a better place depending on the situation.
Just imagine for a minute that you're an officer on a smaller department somewhere and you're in your car at midnight you know the storm you're under has a history of producing tornadoes - you feel you need to be there in order to help warn your community - but you're "in the dark" and have to call your dispatcher who then has to call into a WFO for an update and then relay that message back to you. To me, that would be kind of scary - especially if I couldn't recall everything that was said in a presentation back in February...
So my one recommendation might be to create a training program for dispatchers and 911 operators. But- I could be way off track with that. I know they are busy - but with good training they should be able to quickly identify some tell tale signs of danger and quickly move their spotters if need be. Who knows - it might help. And, it's basically what OK-FIRST has done in Oklahoma, but of course that is a little more than a 2-hour training program.
And to boot - most chasers that I know (and that would be quite a few of you) are the type of people that would love to pitch in and help develop these type of programs, and some have offered and usually the result is like bouncing off a brick wall, basically what David had pointed out earlier.
[updated]
I'm also not referring to an EOC with a director who is on top of things with a well trained team. I've was once part of such an EM team and for the most part it works out well. My scenario would be best applied to those areas where there might not be an operational EOC at the time - just a few LE spotters (or fire) and a dispatcher working the night shift in small town America.
-Brian Barnes
