Sioux Falls, SD — The National Weather Service is offering a virtual seminar on winter weather, and it’s open to anyone.
Our area is served by the National Weather Service’s Sioux Falls Office. Matthew Dux is a meteorologist with that office and is the one leading the online seminars. He tells us why they decided to offer this.
(as said:) “Going into the to our past and looking at how we’ve kind of helped raise awareness and raise safety information across the region. A lot of in the past we focused on severe weather season — tornadoes, severe storms, and those kinds of things. Well, we kind of came to the realization that winter weather is a big impact in this part of the region. So we wanted to really increase our awareness around this and help provide resources for folks to kind of learn more about what happens in this part of the region in winter and also, how to stay prepared and how to react after a storm moves through.”
He tells us about the topics you can learn about.
(as said:) “We talk about these few different things. Obviously, we don’t want to drag on for several hours… there’s a lot to talk about with winter weather. But we do try to prepare folks for what to expect. We’ll talk a little bit about the climatology of winter, what we typically see as far as warnings and advisories in this area, but we’ll also talk about ways to stay safe. We’ll talk about how to prepare before winter storms… how to stay aware of your forecast, and we’ll talk about what to do in the cases… say if you have to travel or if you’re stuck at home and a major winter storm’s moving through, and lastly we’ll also talk a little bit about how to measure snowfall… how to measure freezing rain and then how we get that information that you measure not only into our office but also to the other people — kind of like yourself — who use the snowfall information that comes in.”
The second of the two seminars is coming up on Tuesday, December 22nd, says Dux.
(as said:) “That’s going to take place at 6:30 in the evening. Hopefully, that can catch people after they’ve had their dinner and settling in for the evening. If you’re interested in registering for it is a virtual class. We can’t do in-person classes right now, but virtual classes can be registered by going to our website www.weather.gov/SiouxFalls. And then looking at the top news of the day, there will be a little link there that will push you towards winter weather awareness. And on that page, you’ll see a link to register for our second class. And again that that class is next Tuesday evening.”
Dux says the target audience of the class is the general public. There are no limitations. Even kids and school groups are welcome. You can check them out on Twitter and Facebook, and that website once again is weather.gov/siouxfalls.
