Last Tuesday night I went to a SkyWarn training class held at the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society meeting. It was a Advanced Spotter’s Class, and covered in-depth how to identify features of severe weather.
The class began at 7:30 and was over two hours long and extremely thorough. Jeff Orrock, the Raleigh NWS meterologist giving the class, provided a wealth of information, almost to the point of trying to cram six years of meterology training into two hours. By the end of it, my head was blissfully spinning with wall and shelf clouds and a handful of RARS members were snoring in their seats.
It sounds bizarre, but I’m kind of looking forward to seeing severe weather (only if no one gets hurt, of course). I feel kind of like the firefighter who’s a secret pyromaniac, though fortunately for you I can’t create the weather. 🙂
The Advanced Spotter’s Guide I got in class was a black-and-white version and not very useful because the photos were too dark. I found a color PDF version here. Here’s a PDF of the Basic Spotter’s Guide, too.