Spotters provide an invaluable service to their communities and to the National Weather Service.

Spotter reports help your community by assisting local public safety officials in making critical decisions to protect lives – when to sound sirens, activate safety plans, etc

Spotter reports also help the NWS in the warning process. Your report becomes part of the warning decision making process, and is combined with radar data and other information and used by NWS forecasters to decide whether or not to:

• Issue a new warning
• Cancel an existing warning
• Continue a warning
• Issue a warning for the next county
• Change the warning type (from severe thunderstorm to tornado, for example)

For your reports to be the most useful, they should be as detailed, accurate and timely as possible.  Use the guidelines below to help you make your report. Although reporting criteria may vary slightly depending on the spotter network and local needs, these are the events the National Weather Service would like to know about as soon as possible:

• Tornado
• Funnel Cloud—Organized, Persistent, Sustained Rotation
• Wall Cloud—Organized, Persistent, Sustained Rotation
• Hail—Dime Size or Larger, Report the largest size hailstone
• Wind Gusts—58mph or higher, specify estimated or measured
• Flooding— that impacts roads, homes or businesses
• Storm Damage
  • Damage to structures (roof, siding, windows, etc)
  • Damage to vehicles (hail or wind)
  • Trees or large limbs down
  • Power/telephone poles or lines down
  • Damage to farm equipment, machinery, etc
  • Reports should provide as much detail as possible to describe the where, when, how, etc of the event.

HOW TO REPORT

Your severe weather report should be detailed but concise, and should address the following questions:

WHAT did you see?

WHERE did you see it?   Report the location/approximate location of the event. Be sure to distinguish clearly between where you are and where the event is thought to be happening (“I’m 5 miles north of Mayberry. The tornado looks to be about 5 miles to my northwest”).

WHEN did you see it?   Be sure that reports that are relayed through multiple sources carry the time of the event, NOT the report time.

Any other details that are important - How long did it last? Direction of travel? Was there damage? etc.

The above information was taken directly from the National Weather Service - http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/stormspotting/reports.php