May Day May Day Cawfee an Grub

I posted this elsewhere, but thought it might be useful to some here as bad as the year is. If you want to take things in your own hands and keep well informed of what is going on with tornadoes.

It will help you keep track of what's going on, with all the ones this year and I expect more on the way some may find it useful.

Open two windows, on the first one go to:

http://www.wunderground.com/radar/map.asp

This seems to be the best free radar site, On the map click on the closest radar to you that is in the direction the storm is coming from, with tornadoes it is most often from the SW to NE. When the radar comes up click on animate on the tool bar, you will have about a 300 mile sweep. Also click on storm tracks, this will give the projected path of any storms and will assign a letter and number to each cell. The yellow squares are heavy hail on radar, the yellow diamonds are mesocyclones (cloud rotation) The purple triangles are radar detected tornado vortexes and may or may not be on the ground. Scroll down and there is a chart with more info on the cell.

One can also left click on the mouse and draw a box that will bring that area in close, this will get you down to about a 40X40 mile square. The show severe will bring up any watches and warnings on the map. The info there though is often a few minutes behind.

The second window go to:

http://www.weather.gov/

This will give you a map of the US with watch and warning boxes on it, put the cursor as close to you as you can and left click, this brings up a map of the area with watch and warning boxes plus a list to the right side of types of watches and warning. Tornado warning will have a red square and be at the top. Click on the warnings, this will bring up all active warnings in the area, listed by counties and will show towns in the projected path. It will also tell you if it is a storm that is capable of producing a tornado or if one is on radar or has been confirmed by a trained spotter.

These are the same warnings that local TV and Radio get, refresh often and check.

If in an area where you are not familiar with or watching an area for someone where you are not familiar with the towns and counties, open two more windows here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Type in the town and state in the search, when it comes up go to the right and click on the coordinates for the place, this will take you to several map and satellite sites, I use the map on Acme Mapper and the map button on the left. This will allow you to locate where you are real quick, scroll it up and down with the slider on the left of the map.

Type the town in the next wiki window and when it comes up it will tell you what county the town is in, then click the county, scroll down and find the chart that shows the county in the center and the adjacent ones by direction. This will get you located very quickly and you can understand where the warnings are from the NOAA site very easily.

Local radio, TV and NOAA Weather Radio is also good to have, but these two sites at the top will keep you informed even better if you understand how to use them. The other two will get you located.