For those in the Keller area who might be interested, I’d like to let you know that the Keller Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) will be hosting a SKYWARN class on Saturday, September 15, 2007.  The class will feature Mr. Gary Woodall of the National Weather Service Forecast Office – Fort Worth. 

It will be held from 9:00am to noon at the Keller Police community room (located at 330 Rufe Snow Drive). 

So just what is SKYWARN and why would you be interested? 

SKYWARN is a volunteer program established by NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) in partnership with other organizations.  According to NOAA, “SKYWARN has nearly 280,000 trained severe weather spotters,” and “these volunteers help keep their local communities safe by providing timely and accurate reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service.”

While that might sound kind of intimidating, SKYWARN training is valuable for anyone who lives in North Texas whether they wish to participate in storm spotting activities or not.  The basic SKYWARN class covers:

• Basics of thunderstorm development
• Fundamentals of storm structure
• Identifying potential severe weather features
• Information to report
• How to report information
• Basic severe weather safety

I’ve been to both the basic and advanced SKYWARN training, and while I don’t go chase storms, it’s helped me quite a bit in understanding when I should worry about a particular storm and which areas are most dangerous in such a storm.