What is SKY WARN?
SKY WARN is a concept developed in the early 1970s that was intended to promote
a cooperative effort between the National Weather Service and communities. The
emphasis of the effort is often focused on the storm spotter, an individual who takes
a position near their community and reports wind gusts, hail size, rainfall, and
cloud formations that could signal a developing tornado. Another part of
SKY WARN is the receipt and effective distribution of National Weather Service
information.
The organization of spotters and the distribution of warning information lies with
the National Weather Service or with an emergency management agency within the
community. This agency could be a police or fire department, or often is an
emergency management group. This varies across the country however, with local
national weather service offices taking the lead in some locations, while emergency
management takes the lead in other areas.
SKY WARN is not a club or organization, however, in some areas where Emergency
Management programs do not perform the function, people have organized
SKY WARN groups that work independent of a parent government agency and feed
valuable information to the National Weather Service. While this provides the radar
meteorologist with much needed input, the circuit is not complete if the information
does not reach those who can activate sirens or local broadcast systems.
SKY WARN spotters are not by definition "Storm Chasers". While their functions
and methods are similar, the spotter stays close to home and usually has ties to a
local agency. Storm chasers often cover hundreds of miles a day. The term Storm
Chaser covers a wide variety of people. Some are meteorologists doing specific
research or are gathering basic information (like video) for training and comparison
to radar data. Others chase storms to provide live information for the media, and
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