PRESS KIT ALACHUA COUNTY SKYWARN BASIC SPOTTER TRAINING CLASS Alachua County SKYWARN will be holding a BASIC SPOTTER TRAINING CLASS... Date : March 27th, 2002 (Wednesday) Time : 7:00 PM Where: Alachua County EOC 1100 SE 27th Street [corner of SE Hawthorne Rd. & SE 27th St.] (Map available at http://www.afn.org/~skywarn/classes.html) Instructor: Fred Johnson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, NWS-JAX Sponsored by: Alachua County SKYWARN, the Alachua County Office of Emergency Management, and the National Weather Service. IMPORTANT NOTE: This class will NOT be held where we usually have it (at the Training Room at ACFR HQ, downtown), but will INSTEAD be held at the relatively new Emergency Operations Center on SE Hawthorne Road. While a little farther to drive to, yes, the EOC can handle more people than the Training Room and has better media handling capabilities; and there is PLENTY of parking space available. Unfortunately, there are no detailed maps available at this time but we'll be creating one very, very soon, here, and they'll be placed up at http://www.afn.org/~skywarn/classes.html, so keep checking that page. DESCRIPTION SKYWARN is a program sponsored by the National Weather Service and is designed to train the public on how to spot certain dangerous signs of severe weather, and how to report them to the NWS and local Emergency Management. Spotter reports aid officials in fine tuning any necessary watches and warnings that may be issued to the public, by allowing them to customize them to indicate current ongoing threats within particular storms. Spotters allow "ground truthing" for the NWS, allowing them to "see," at the ground level, what the radar cannot see in your area due to the curvature of the earth. This is a BASIC-level class, so anyone may attend. There are no age limits. There are no fees to take the course; this is offered to the public free of charge. So invite your friends! AGENDA The class should last about an hour and a half, starting at 7:00 PM and lasting until about 8:30 PM. The Instructor will give a presentation involving mostly slides - with some video clips - to aid him in his presentation. There will be a short break halfway through the presentation. At the completion of the presentation, the Instructor will hold a short question and answer session going over what was just discussed. Attendees will then be asked to sign a couple of roster sheets - one for EOC officials and one for the NWS. They will then be assigned a "spotter ID number," and given a nice, laminated "spotter ID card" with contact information on the back, which the new spotters can then use to make their severe weather reports to the NWS with. After the class, if anyone is interested, there will be a short tour of the EOC facilities that will last maybe 20 minutes, conducted by Dave Donnelly, the Alachua Co. Asst. Emergency Manager. So you can expect to be able to leave by about 8:30pm; or, if you decide to stay for the EOC tour ... expect to be out by about 9:00pm. SUGGESTED ANNOUNCEMENT SCRIPT (for use with radio spots and/or online and/or TV "community bulletin board" type announcements) "Alachua County SKYWARN will be holding a Severe Weather Storm Spotter Training Class on March 27th at 7:00 PM at the Alachua Co. Emergency Operations Center located at the corner of S.E. Hawthorne Road and S.E. 27th Street. Learn how to spot the dangerous signs of severe weather and how to report them to the Weather Service and to local officials. This class is offered as a free public service by Alachua County SKYWARN, the Alachua Co. Office of Emergency Management, and the National Weather Service. There are no age limits, and anyone may attend - so invite your friends and family. You'll learn how to provide a valuable public service that could very well save lives when severe weather strikes! For more information about Alachua County SKYWARN, visit their web site at WWW.FIRELINE.ORG/SKYWARN." (NOTE: The announcement above actually refers people to our "mirror" site. We decided that - since the mirror site's address was less the pesky, inconvenient little "tilde" symbol [that no one seems to know anything about] - that it would be MUCH easier to voice, and be MUCH easier to remember, than the AFN address. ALL-CAPS was used for the address for ease of reading, only; and is not required.) FOR FURTHER INFORMATION Related web pages: o Alachua County SKYWARN http://www.afn.org/~skywarn (Mirror site: http://www.fireline.org/skywarn) o Alachua Co. Office of Emergency Management http://www.alachua-em.org o National Weather Service. - Jacksonville Office http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax/cgi-bin/master.pl?suite=home CONTACT INFO Todd L. Sherman Coordinator, Alachua County SKYWARN Tel: (352) 379-4911 E-mail: skywarn@fireline.org Dave Donnelly Alachua Co. Asst. Emergency Coordinator EOC : (352) 264-6500 Desk: (352) 264-6520 E-mail: ddonnell@co.alachua.fl.us Fred Johnson Warning Coordination Meteorologist National Weather Service Office - Jacksonville Tel: (904) 741-4011, then 223 E-mail: fred.johnson@noaa.gov --- cc: