Staying put, and staying ready
- View
Why fixed-location spotting is the real thing rather than the consolation prize, why night changes the answer, and what to have in the car.
In this lesson you will
- Justify fixed-location spotting as a legitimate and safer form of ground truth.
- Explain why night spotting should be fixed-location and radar-informed.
- Complete an equipment and preparedness checklist.
Nothing in the SKYWARN model requires you to chase
This needs saying because the culture implies otherwise and the photographs certainly do. The NWS spotter model is about ground truth, not about proximity. A spotter reporting hail size, wind damage, water over a road or a wall cloud from a known fixed location is doing exactly the thing the network was built for.
Module 1 said it: the office knows exactly where a stationary report came from, and that is most of what makes a report usable. A mobile spotter trades coverage for a harder location problem, and a report whose position is uncertain is worth less than one whose position is a fixed point somebody has on a map.
Add the reporting side. Reports here are cross-checked against radar rather than judged on how close the observer was, so proximity buys you nothing at all in how your report is treated, while costing you every risk in lessons 2 through 6.
Night
Lesson 5 gave the numbers: nocturnal tornadoes are about 2.5 times as likely to kill, and they cause a share of fatalities far above their share of events. For a spotter specifically, every technique in modules 3 and 4 depends on seeing structure, and after dark there is no structure to see.
Treat night spotting as a fixed-location, radar-informed and weather-radio-informed activity, not a mobile one. Lightning gives you a fraction of a second of a scene you will misread more often than not, and the road hazards that lesson 2 listed are all invisible. If you are out at night, be somewhere, with shelter, and stay there.
What you can still do from a fixed location at night is considerable, and it is the part offices are short of: wind damage as it happens, hail with a measurement, water rising over a road you know, and the sound of a circulation you cannot see. Report what you heard and say that you heard it rather than saw it. That is a real observation, properly labeled.
The checklist
Assembled once, before the season, and checked at the start of it. Most of this is lesson 2 in physical form.
- The vehicle
- Fuel above half. Tires good, spare inflated, and the tools to change it. Wipers that clear the screen properly. All lights working.
- Information
- NOAA Weather Radio, which works when the mobile network does not. A charged phone and a power bank. Radar on something with a battery. Paper maps, plus offline maps on the device.
- Communication
- Whatever your net uses. Module 10 covers this properly, and the safety point is simply that somebody should know where you are and when you expect to be back.
- If it goes wrong
- First aid kit. Headlamp, so your hands are free. Reflective vest, for the roadside that lesson 2 says you will eventually be standing on. Rain gear. Water.
- For the report
- A reliable way to fix your position and the event position, and something of known size to photograph hail against. Module 7 lesson 6.
When in doubt, do not go out. It is not a slogan about timidity. Doubt, in this job, is usually your judgment noticing something before you can articulate it, and lesson 8 is about taking that seriously rather than talking yourself past it.
Check yourself
A severe squall line will cross your county around 2 a.m. with a tornado risk. You are a trained spotter. What is the right plan?
- Stay home, monitor radar and weather radio, and report what you can observe and hear from shelter
- Drive to an elevated spot with a long sightline before the line arrives
- Position along the line's path and move with it, using radar to stay ahead
- Do nothing. There is no useful spotting to be done at night
Hint
Two of these are mobile at night. One of them undervalues what a fixed spotter can still contribute.
Answer
Stay home, monitor radar and weather radio, and report what you can observe and hear from shelter
Fixed location, with shelter, is the correct posture for a nocturnal QLCS event, and it is not a lesser form of spotting. You can still report wind damage, hail, flooding and what you heard, all from a position the office can place exactly. The last option is wrong in the other direction: those reports are exactly what is scarce overnight.