One great skill that you can add to your skill-set is getting a weather spotter training. This is offered by the National Weather Service (NWS) for free, in all areas of the U.S. The NWS has a volunteer SKYWARN program comprised of between 350,000 and 400,000 trained severe weather spotters. The spotter training consists of
- Basics of thunderstorm development
- Fundamentals of storm structure
- Identifying potential severe weather features
- Information to report
- How to report information
- Basic severe weather safety
The severe weather safety guidelines can be extremely helpful when observing storm formations, or even when developing your emergency plans. Identification of supercells, funnel clouds, hail size and patterns and other storm formations is very important for your own situational awareness, as well as for the good of the community. You are trained to report the weather conditions to the NWS and help them get a clear picture of the weather. Go to the SKYWARN site, http://www.nws.noaa.gov/skywarn/ for more information.
This is a great way to help your community and increase your self awareness at the same time!