Many of us have been caught in bad weather. One way to keep from being caught unaware is to know what to look for, and get out of harms way.
I’d like to recommend all to attend a National Weather Service (NWS) Storm Spotters Course. These are held thru out the spring in most states. The classes are about 3 hours long and FREE! The class is geared for volunteer spotters to submit reports to the NWS either via Phone, internet E-spotter or Ham radio (my personal Favorite). Maybe you could join the spotters when its too stormy to paddle anyway!
Classes are listed on the NWS web sites.
For the Green Bay area: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/grb/
You can slide over or search other NWS sites from there.
take care
Stan
NOAA SKYWARN System
The NOAA National SKYWARN System is both interesting and worthwhile.
See - http://www.skywarn.org/ and http://www.skywarn.org/about.htm
Spotters are activated via NOAA weather radios, and report to appropriate authorities.
They are the “human eyes” of the advanced Dopler Radar and weather modeling systems, primarily to detect hazardous weather events. I have been a spotter for years.
The vast majority of weather spotters in my area are disaster or police/fire professionals, but there are “interested civilians” as well. The training is cool (mine costs $30 for the annual all-day advanced, mostly for the text materials and meal included) — and the end of each session usually wraps up with unbelievable film/video from “storm chasers” and scientific researchers. Those presentations are awesome – like the footage of what happens when a “tornado chaser” actually CATCHES a tornado - hilarious (and scary).
Pictures
I wish I could see that tornado chaser video! Is it on a website? I took this class last spring to be able to identify super cells and such. Okay, I really took the class because I am just a geek, no other excuse. It is a VERY cool class.
You tube
has a lot of tornado chasing videos. I am a spotter not a chaser. Just look, report, run!
take care
Stan