From our National Weather Service Charleston Partner:
Spring is almost here and with it comes severe weather season! Thankfully the weather is pretty quiet this week with no big severe weather events on the horizon. However, it is the time of year when we like to get folks thinking about severe weather and how to stay safe when the weather gets hazardous.
With that in mind, we have a couple of opportunities for you to attend NWS Weather Spotter Training coming up:
Monday March 18- 6 pm to 7:30 pm
In-person at the Lawrence County Joint Response Operations Center in Coal Grove, OH. Hosted by Lawrence County Emergency Management Agency and the Southern Ohio Amateur Radio Association.
Thursday March 21- 6:30 pm to 8 pm
Virtual Weather Spotter Training. Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1915393673082075742.
We are also trying to grow our CoCoRaHS network of volunteer observers. CoCoRaHS stands for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. Basically, it is composed of folks just like you who are into the weather and take a once daily weather observation containing measurements of how much rain and snow has fallen. This is critical information and the observations from CoCoRaHS help us have a form of Quality Assurance/Quality Control for the information provided by our radar and automated rain gauges located across our region. You can find out more about CoCoRaHS in our area at https://www.weather.gov/rlx/cocorahs_observers. We are also offering a couple of online webinars where you can learn more about the program and get trained on how to be a CoCoRaHS Observer all from the comfort of your home! Here are those classes with registration links:
March 16- 12 PM to 1 PM Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7848372710874736218
March 22- 6 PM to 7 PM Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7613213561972609880
March is a good time to start getting prepared for severe weather and that means Severe Weather Awareness Week campaigns. In West Virginia and Ohio, Severe Weather Awareness Week is coming up next week. This year is somewhat special as it’s the 50th Anniversary of the April 1974 Tornado Super Outbreak, which featured several tornadoes across southern West Virginia and southwest Virginia. We have lots of good information to share on that event and even some survivor stories. These stories are amazing and really bring home the fact that yes, we do get tornadoes in the mountains, and it’s important to know how to stay safe when they do strike. To that end, we’ll have statewide Tornado Safety Drills giving folks a great opportunity to practice what they would do in the event of a real tornado. Here are the dates/times for those drills:
Ohio: Wednesday March 20 at 9:50 am EDT
West Virginia: Wednesday March 20 at 11:00 am EDT