Spring has sprung for many and that means the summer severe weather season is just around the corner!

Storm spotting, the act of monitoring the development of inclement weather dates back to 1942. In the period between 1942 and 1943 the U.S weather bureau lunched a joint project with the military to setup several networks of storm spotters in places where it was deemed necessary and important. The initial reason these network were setup was to effectively detect and monitor lightning in the vicinity of ordnance plants where highly volatile concoctions for munitions were created. Initially it was believed that only lightning posed any considerable threat but this was not true and two major events would change the role of storm spotters forever.

The year 1942 was particularly active with a large number of tornadoes effecting numerous military and civilian operations. On April 27^th 1942 a tornado struck Pryor Oklahoma damaging a number of munitions plants and on May 15th 1943 a tornado directly struck and damaged a number of buildings at the Fort Riley base in Kansas. These events as well as others lead to the development of over 200 spotter networks by 1945; however most spotters were still either military, aviation or law enforcement personnel. It was not until 1947 after a series of violent tornadoes that the state of Texas placed emphasis on the development of a volunteer spotter network.

The 1950's introduced the era of weather radar and by this time spotters were commonplace. It was quickly discovered that the deployment of reflectivity only radars provided much needed information about basic storm structure, evolution and basic motion but these radar's could not detected the motion of individual particles within a storm, only spotters could visually convey such information greatly helping forecasters determine tornado potential. Thus the era of ground truthing as we know it today had begun.

Modern automated weather technologies provide information that people could only dream about in the early days of weather forecasting, but many limitations exist and that is why spotters are crucial. While modern weather radar can reveal a potential tornado signature, estimate hail size, calculate downburst wind speeds and a multitude of other things, most weather radar data is taken at a height of 1km or more above the ground and that means the only way to verify what the radar is suggesting is through the use of trained spotters observing what is actually happening at the ground level.

While it is unlikely that an ARES group would be called to action for a civil emergency, spotters play an active role many days of the year in different regions across the globe and many spotter groups are directly associated with ARES on some level.

For anyone who wishes to become a storm spotter in the U.S please visit www.skywarn.org and for those in Canada please visit http://vaxxine.com/va3nag/canwarn/training.html or http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/severe-weather/canwarn-e.html .

European amateurs and others should contact their local weather agency for more information.

If you have missed all your local training sessions, or cannot attend a session there is online training material, http://spotterguides.us/ .

Here are some basics:

- The common simplex frequency used when spotting is 146.550 or 146.490

- The most common UHF frequency is 446.025 which is often cross banded to 146.550

When giving a report:

- Always give your call sign or spotter number

- Time and general location followed by exact location

- Type of event and its duration

- Use commonly accepted measurements

- Report any damage

- Use acceptable spotter terminology to describe cloud or storm features

Remember, severe weather does not mean only tornadoes. Flash flooding, hail, strong winds, and storm structure are all important things to report but most important of all is to be safe and keep your eyes on the skies at all times during severe weather.