It’s a very straightforward motto. It’s the Skywarn mission. We all work hard and do a stellar job at spotting, reporting, and documenting severe weather throughout the Springfield, Missouri County Warning Area as we strive to do just that: protect life and property. There’s no question that last week was one of the most difficult weeks since the Joplin tornado of 2011. The Severe Weather Event of Thursday, July 19, 2018, will no doubt be the subject of many spotter training sessions for years to come.
From the watches issued by the Storm Prediction Center earlier that day to the ongoing barrage of warnings issued by the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Springfield, Missouri, during the onset of the event, the meteorology professionals we depend upon had our back every second of that day. They did an amazing job, and they were spot on every time!
On the air, our Skywarn net control operators and mobile spotters hit it out of the ballpark. Excellent traffic handling by our net controlers combined with beneficial reports by our spotters helped everyone understand very quickly that a 60-mile-wide bullet train was bearing down on us and that time was of the essence.
Sometimes, though, things just don’t go the way we all hope they will go.
The scientific professionals with the National Weather Service along with all of us – the volunteers who make up Skywarn – provide an exchange of information. We all give and we all take this information. At the end of the day, our hope is that this information will be heeded by those in a storm’s path and that everyone will be okay. Most of the time, this goal is met. However, once in a while, something goes terribly wrong. It’s hard to accept. It’s hard to process. But, please keep one thing in mind: if it weren’t for this amazing team of professionals and volunteers, this sort of thing would happen much more often. We cannot control what people do once this information which we exchange reaches them. We can only hope for the best outcome. And, when things don’t work out the way we hope, then we must continue moving forward and continue preparing for the next time – because there will always be a next time.
THANK YOU to everyone who participates in our ongoing mission to protect life and property throughout Southwest Missouri and extreme Southeast Kansas!