Participants in Thursday evening’s “storm spotting class” sit on the stairs and stand against the wall due to an unusually high volume of people participating in the class given by the National Weather Service at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn. The participants completing the two-hour seminar receive a certificate and become a volunteer storm spotter.GET INVOLVEDThe National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn., holds storm spotter classes in each of the 33 counties in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia and Western North Carolina. The next class in this area is in Decatur at 6 p.m. March 28 at the Meigs County Emergency Operations Center on Highway 58.
CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Everyone has a storm story.
Those memories of the tornadoes that struck Bradley County in 2011 and this year brought out a large crowd Thursday evening for an annual storm spotters class led by the National Weather Service.
“Bradley and Hamilton counties have been in the crosshairs the past couple of years,” George Matthews with the weather service in Morristown, Tenn., said. “So we were expecting a larger crowd.”
Those who stayed the full two hours each received a two-year certificate, an identification number and contact information to the weather service. They become part of SkyWarn, the National Weather Service’s volunteer spotter network.