Learn To Be a Spotter for National Weather Service Binghamton
Whenever there is any type of weather event in the Southern Tier, residents love to chime in whether with snowfall totals or hail size measurements, but did you know that there is a group of people who have actually been trained on how to properly report such things and you can be one of those people?
The National Weather Service created a program called SKYWARN® in order to obtain additional critical weather information. The SKYWARN® program is a volunteer program and has upward of 400,000 trained severe weather spotters nationwide, but additional trained spotters are needed for the Southern Tier area.
While the National Weather Service has the technology needed to forecast and monitor the weather, none replace the eyes of a trained SKYWARN® Spotter. SKYWARN® volunteers help to keep their community safe by reporting timely and accurate reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service and those reports can make the difference in warning the next town in the path of a storm.
On Friday, April 14, Kopernik Observatory and Science Center will host a session of SKYWARN® Spotter Training for the National Weather Service Binghamton Forecast Office. The program will be offered in person and online for anyone interested in learning to become a SKYWARN® Spotter.
During the training conducted by National Weather Service Meteorologist Jake Chalupsk will go through what makes a thunderstorm severe, and how to report the ground truth of what is happening directly to the NWS. Your report can make the difference in warning the next town in the path of a storm.
The doors to Kopernik will open at 7:30 p.m. and the training will begin at 8:00 p.m. If the sky is clear on Friday night, Kopernik will open the domes so that you can view the night sky before and after the program.
If you would like to attend the SKYWARN® Spotter training, you are encouraged to register in advance. If you cannot attend the training on Friday but would like to learn more about the program, you can contact Mark Pelleriot at 607-729-1597.