CANYON, TX -- Wednesday night, more than 50 people became newly trained storm spotters.
They took the latest National Weather Service training course. People lined up in Canyon to learn how to report what they see during a storm.
They learned how to spot hail, high winds, and tornadoes. If you couldn't make it, we picked up one tip on how to tell if what you're seeing really is a tornado.
"There's the funnel which is the rotating column of air that's attached to a thunderstorm cloud base, but there is no debris on the ground, so a tornado is actually a rotating funnel attacked to the cloud base, and even if it doesn't visibility reach the ground, if it has debris rotating, that is in fact a tornado," said Steve Drillettte, from the National Weather Service.
The local national weather service will train 1,200 spotters every year.
All the spotters are volunteers, and while the weather service does have good, scientific tools to know what's going on, it says hearing it first hand from a spotter helps with accuracy.
