New member looking for some information.

[Austin Dawg]

I have been a weather nut for my entire life. I lived most of my life in Mississippi, which sees just about every kind of weather possible in North America. I had Meteorology in college and loved it.

I would love to get involved with spotting but my health makes that difficult, but I would love to help. Are there any opportunities for a home-based weather nut to help spotters or forecasters for severe weather events?

Thanks for any information you can provide and I look forward to reading and occasionally posting here.

 

[WesL]

@Austin Dawg welcome to TalkWeather! We are glad to have you as a part of our family. Naturally, we invite you to join us for severe weather events and help us stay up to date on storm location and damage information. In the past, I've tuned into scanners via Broadcastify.com, monitored PulsePoint (http://webapp.pulsepoint.com) and monitored Twitter and live feeds of chasers and posted that information here. Everyone really appreciates that and I can tell you from our analytics program our site is visited by members of the media and NWS during severe weather events.

If that doesn't suit your fancy, you should look into becoming a HAM radio operator. That is one the best ways to get storm and damage information to the NWS and it is also a great way to get information as well. I haven't taken the test but I know there are several websites dedicated to helping you study for the exam.

 

[Mike S]

Not all offices has this, but the Huntsville NWS office has an online application to submit storm reports. http://www.weather.gov/hun/submitLSR?site=HUN. Its actually a pretty neat reporting tool.

If your local office does not have something similar (simply do a Google search for "submit storm report" and include your local office name at the end), most if not all offices have a Facebook and Twitter account and monitor those for reports.

To add to @WesL 's list of sites he monitors, I always pull https://weather.im/iembot/ up during events. You'll notice the drop down box on the left that says "Available rooms" and you will find your local office there. Keep in mind they are listed in alphabetical order based on office designation code, not city. You will find Dallas/Ft Forth, for example, under FWDchat, not with "D" for Dallas. You can have multiple tabs if you want to monitor more than one office, or choose all offices.

 

[Austin Dawg]

Thanks for your suggestions. I am gearing up to go to SKYWARN classes both online and public. I need to learn as much as I can to speak the language.

The HAM operator is definitely something to consider for the future since I was into the radio weather scene a very long, long time ago and have a friend in my hometown of Smithville, MS who is one that can help me get started.

I'm glad I found this site. It seems very open and current for all forms of weather. Thanks for the welcome and see you in the threads.