Spotting Groups of Two

[Jim Hunt]

Is anyone doing traditional Skywarn spotting have a policy of having two people teams at spotting locations rather than just one person? Sometimes a great location might have more than one person but sometimes we position people in locations alone.

With so much to watch in the sky plus with all of the additional distractions from cell phones to amateur radio to laptops, it might be time to assign teams.

Thoughts?

 

[Ric Burney]

While having two person teams is optimum it is not always possible. Since Skywarn is generally volunteer it will depend on each events time/day whether or not you will have enough people available to put this into practice. Dallas Co. area Skywarn groups usually are comprised of solo spotters with a few exceptions.

 

[rdale]

With so much to watch in the sky plus with all of the additional distractions from cell phones to amateur radio to laptops, it might be time to assign teams.

Given manpower issues, that's probably a waste of resources. What might be better in your case is training people to remove themselves from distractions. The last thing a Skywarn spotter should be doing when a storm is overhead would be checking the radar, or yapping with his wife on the cellphone, or chatting on a side channel with his amateur radio.

Those things are nice to use pre-storm, but once the funnel is on the horizon whether you're a Skywarn spotter or storm chaser -- DROP THE DISTRACTIONS!

 

[Tim Shriver]

Static spotting two would be nice, but not a really needed.

If your tracking (mobile spotting) then we
highly recommend two per car.

Tim

 

[Jim Hunt]

I do see one benefit of two per location/car is some of the new spotters who attend a Skywarn class but never participate. Some of that is likely due to amateur radio license. Maybe some participation with an experienced spotter would get them licensed and more active.

 

[A. Scruggs]

Here in the Texas Panhandle we try to group new spotters with seasoned ones, but as others have said, sometimes there are not enough spotters to cover all the storms that NWS wants eyes on. You do the best you can with what you have.

Alan

 

[Jason Young]

The group I used to be part of in Ardmore , all spotted solo ( other than maybe a wife ) . But they do have a habit of all sitting in the same location at times.

 

[Jason Tunzer]

For the first year we require the newbies deploy 3 times with a vetren spotter before they can be considered to go out on their own, provided they have a radio and we feel they can handle the pressure.