Keith Chancey can look at a radar map and tell exactly what weather is coming, but he isn’t a meteorologist.
The 55-year-old locomotive engineer is a trained storm spotter and, after eight years of attending classes, he says he’s gotten comfortable reading radar maps.
“The National Weather Service radar map you can get on the Internet, I can take that and tell you a whole lot about what’s coming,” said the Cleveland, Tenn., resident. “And it’s not only watching the radars, but taking the information as it comes in.”
Mr. Chancey is part of a network of storm spotters throughout Southeast Tennessee trained by the Weather Service. He said storm spotters relay information to weather service forecasters about thunderstorms, floods, tornadoes and snowstorms.
Next week, Mr. Chancey will be attending yet another storm-spotting class in Cleveland.