Haskell,
When I read your post I went and read up on the NWS SKYWARN Storm Spotter Program. Readers can click that link and read more about it if they wish. Then I gave you a call and after chatting with you I confirmed that you were asking about the Skywarn™ Recognition Day on December 1-2 (1900-1900).
For those of you that are not aware, the National Weather Service (NWS) and the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) put the recognition day program together to accomplish several goals: Recognition for those that participate in SKYWARN, to highlight the ongoing training that they wish participants to take and graphically displaying where storm spotters certified by SKYWARN are geographically located, to name a few.
For those that are currently SKYWARN certified you may be interested in clicking the link to the official 2023 Skywarn Recognition Day Spotter Check-In page. Once you have logged in you will be able to obtain a SKYWARN Recognition Day Certificate on 12/3. And yes, they spell it Skywarn and SKYWARN interchangeably on their site.
For those that are not SKYWARN certificated I started digging into how to address getting the training. There is an online presence called COMET MetEd that does the training – SKYWARN® Spotter Training. On that web page they do say “…many National Weather Service (NWS) offices require training in addition to this online course.” To address that point I have reached out to the Fort Worth NWS office and asked them if there are any 100% online resources that meet their criteria. Do you need this training? You do if you want to be a SKYWARN certified weather observer. If you do not know the objective difference between a funnel cloud or a tornado or the accurate manner in which to report hail sizes, you too would benefit.
The Fort Worth office of the National Weather Service has conducted training in Paris in January a number of times. So, I have also asked if they have a date planned in January 2024 where they will again conduct that training in Paris. I have previously noted as little as just a few days heads up on these training sessions. Here we are just days from December 1st and I could not find anything about a January NWS SKYWARN course in Paris. It would be nice if the Club could start advertising the date several weeks out, so hopefully they reply to me with a date. I will let everyone know if they do.
73
Phillip Beall (W5EBC)