In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

As Tropical Storm Danny moves up the East Coast and the nation marks the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, it is a good time to mention a robust volunteer program called SkyWarn. I have wanted to highlight this citizen preparedness opportunity since being reminded of the program by the new (and helpful) Citizen Corps Twitter feed earlier in the month.

SkyWarn, which is run by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is comprised of 260,000 citizen Storm Spotters trained by their local National Weather Service (NWS) office to assist in identifying and reporting extreme conditions.

Classes are free and typically are about two hours long. To find out when a Skywarn class will be conducted in local your area, contact your local NWS office (map here.)