MANSFIELD — Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
Famed 19th Century American essayist and novelist Charles Dudley Warner proffered that quip of an insight. A friend of Mark Twain’s, many since have mistakenly attributed Warner’s remark to Twain.
Regardless of its origin, it’s an oft-repeated lament.
But on Monday, April 15, the National Weather Service office in Cleveland and the Richland County Emergency Management Agency will offer residents a chance to actually do something about the weather.
Or at least help report on it.
Richland County EMA is hosting its annual SKYWARN Spotter training from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Pioneer Career and Technology Center in Shelby.
Preregistration is required at: https://www.weather.gov/cle/SKYWARN_schedule. Contact the Richland County EMA office at 419-774-5686 with questions.
“The free training is open to anyone and you do not have to be a Richland County resident to attend. Bad weather happens everywhere,” Richland County EMA Director Rebecca Owens said.
The NWS conducts these training sessions across the state to share information on a variety of topics, including basics of thunderstorm development, fundamentals of storm structure, identifying potential severe weather features and basic severe weather safety.
Officials said thunderstorms, tornadoes and lightning cause hundreds of deaths and injuries and create billions of dollars in property and crop damage.
To obtain critical weather information, the NWS established SKYWARN with partner organizations.
It’s a volunteer-based program that has between 350,000 and 400,000 trained severe weather spotters.
To become a SKYWARN spotter, you must attend one of these training sessions. Participants will be issued a spotter number and given spotter information.
“These volunteers help keep their local communities safe by providing timely and accurate reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service,” Owens said.
Though SKYWAYN spotters provide essential information for all types of weather hazards, their focus is reporting on severe local thunderstorms.
In an average year, according to the NWS, the United States experiences more than 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods and more than 1,000 tornadoes.
Three tornadoes have touched down in Richland County in the last five years.
Since SKYWARN began five decades ago, information provided by trained spotters — coupled with Dopplar radar technology, improved satellite imagery and other data — has allowed the NWS to issue more timely and accurate severe weather warnings.
“SKYWARN storm spotters form the nation’s first line of defense against severe weather,” Owens said.
“There can be no finer reward than to know your efforts have give your family and neighbors the precious gift of time — minutes that can help save lives,” she said.