It's that time of year again...Severe Weather Awareness Week in Indiana.  All week, we'll be providing tips about severe weather and tornadoes here in northern Indiana and southwest Michigan.  Today we focus on the warning system that the National Weather Service provides for us.  The main items are Watches and Warnings:

WATCH:  A Watch just means that you should pay attention to, or "watch", the situation for a few hours.  A  Watch, either Tornado or Severe Thunderstorm, is issued by the Storm Prediction Center in Kansas City for a large area where they believe a "potential" exists for severe weather.  It is usually issued for an area the size of a state or two and usually lasts for 3 to 5 hours.

WARNING:  A Warning means that you should take cover NOW because there has either been a tornado or severe weather reported, or doppler radar signals are suggesting that severe weather is happening.  A Warning, either a Tornado or Severe Thunderstorm,  is issued by the local National Weather Service, in our case the office near North Webster, IN.  It is usually for an area the size of a county or two and lasts less than an hour.  A Warning means that there is a high likelihood of a tornado or severe weather somewhere in the warning area, and it may be happening already.

I will continue to blog severe weather information through Thursday of this week.  Then on Saturday at 9:30am, we are having a Severe Weather Seminar with the National Weather Service at the downtown South Bend branch of the St. Joseph Public Library.  Everybody is invited to attend.  I will be the keynote speaker this year and will be talking about the media response during and after the Nappanee tornado a year and a half ago.  Following the hour long seminar there will be a more in depth "spotter" training by the National Weather Service. 

Mike