National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office

Severe Weather Spotters are a vital link in the timely and accurate flow of weather information into and out of weather forecast offices.  On this page, you can find training presentations and downloadable training guides.  Additionally, if you need to change your spotter address or phone number, or just have a SKYWARN/spotting question, drop us a line at DMX.Spotter@noaa.gov  and we'll take care of your request as soon as possible. Note:  This email address is not for sending severe weather reports, but instead is for administrative tasks.  For severe weather reporting via the internet, please see the Submit Report link to the left.

Online training can be found by clicking here.

• Spotter Training Presentation - View online with Internet Explorer.  This link will not work well with any other browser.
• Spotter Training Presentation - full download to your computer
  • Click on the above link and choose to Open the Zip file as it's downloaded to your computer.
  • Once the download is complete, extract to a location of your choosing, e.g. "My Documents".
  • A new subdirectory will by made in the location you specified, e.g. C:My DocumentsNWS_Spotter_Training.
  • Within this new directory, use Internet Explorer to Open NWS_Spotter_Training.htm and then view the presentation.
• Dispatcher Training (PDF File) New for 2009
• 2009 Course notes and spotter registration information
• Spotters Data Quality Training
• Basic Spotter's Field Guide - large pdf file which may take a while to download
• Advanced Spotter's Field Guide - large pdf file which may take a while to download
• NOAA's Owlie SKYWARN Educational website