Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Catching a Break/Spotter Meetings

Millie and I have a break from our busy schedule of weather talks this week. We get going again next week with talks in Bel Aire at the City Hall and next Friday we'll be at Jefferson Elementary School. Pictures will be coming soon.

In the meantime, I've had some questions regarding spotter talks. The National Weather Service hold meetings in each county and they are free and open to anyone. We have a complete list on KWCH.com (in the weather section) but if you want to know about a specific county or city, just send me an email, rjanssen@kwch.com and I'll look it up for you. Wall clouds and shelf clouds are easily confused, as are tornadoes and low hanging clouds. Attending a spotter meeting can help clear this up. But, since you are already here, a wall cloud is on the left, and the shelf cloud is the one that stretches clear across the horizon. Wall clouds sometimes produce tornadoes; shelf clouds produce strong winds. Side by side, you can see how different they are, but some would instantly call a shelf cloud a tornado. We encourage you to report severe weather to us this spring. Good, clear spotter reports are priceless in times of active weather.









I've been forecasting some springlike weather changes by March 8-12. I still think the pattern will change during that time frame and we'll finally start getting some 50 degree weather on a more consistent basis. It's long overdue and I know many of you are counting down to spring. So is Millie. Have a great week.

1 comment:

Jon said...

Thanks for the refresher. Are you going to do a Severe Weather special in the spring?

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