Darlington EMS looking for weather watchers

The Darlington Emergency Management, in conjunction with the SkyWarn Network and the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow network, or CoCoRaHS, is looking for new weather watchers in the Pee Dee area and beyond.

 The two programs, both of which are designed to improve public warning of severe storms, are combined efforts between the National Weather Service, local government and many other partners to increase weather spotter density across Southeast North Carolina and Northeast South Carolina. Volunteers are being recruited to become spotters, or the “eyes and ears,” of the National Weather Service, and all are welcome to join.

Training is required to become a spotter. Darlington County Emergency Management will host a SkyWarn and CoCoRaHS training program on Wednesday, April 27  from 1:30 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. at the EMS Annex at 1625 Harry Byrd Highway in Darlington, South Carolina. The EMS Annex is located behind the Sheriff's Office, adjacent to the 911 Center. Space will be provided for a maximum of 40 people.

The session will be conducted by Steve Pfaff, Warning Coordinator with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, N.C. For more information on the trainng, contact Pfaff at the National Weather Service at 910-762-4289 or Mike (Mac) McDonald, Darlington County Emergency Management Special Programs Coordinator at 843-398-4450.

 The SkyWarn Program is a collaboration between the National Weather Service, its partners, and the public. It was started in the 1970’s in an effort to help local observers report severe weather to the National Weather Service to help keep the volunteers' communities safe. More than 290,000 volunteers are part of the SkyWarn program, but more are always needed. The main responsibility of a SkyWarn spotter is to identify and describe severe weather, and they can do this by going through a training class.

CoCoRaHS came about as a result of a devastating flash flood that hit Fort Collins, Colorado in July 1997. The ensuing flood caught many by surprise and caused $200 million in damages. CoCoRaHS was born in 1998 to help national officials do a better job mapping and reporting intense rain and snow. It is now operating in all 50 states. As more volunteers participated, rain, hail, and snow maps were produced for every storm. The  local patterns were of interest to scientists and the public alike.

 Joining the SkyWarn program requires attendance to a training class or online training at http://www.erh.noaa.gov/ilm/skywarnspotter/, after which volunteers are given a certificate of completion and named official SkyWarn spotters for the National Weather Service. CoCoRaHS volunteers must attend a training class or take online training, and obtain an official rain gauge through the CoCoRaHS website at http://www.cocorahs.org for about $25 plus shipping. The amount of effort required to join these programs is very limited, but by providing high quality, accurate measurements, the observers are able to supplement existing networks and provide useful results to the National Weather Service as well as other scientists, resource managers, and decision makers. 

The Carolina's have the most complex climate in the eastern United States. Data gathered from CoCoRaHS volunteers can be very important in better understanding our climate. An additional benefit of the programs to the National Weather Service and local Emergency Management agencies is the ability to receive timely reports of significant weather (hail, intense rainfall, localized flooding) from observers that can assist in issuing and verifying warnings for severe weather. These reports provide County Emergency Management, Fire, EMS and law enforcement agencies with accurate information that insures the most effective utilization of local resources and the ability to identify the need for state or federal resources.