WEATHERING IT ALL; METEOROLOGISTS SEEKING VOLUNTEERS TO WARN OF TROUBLE.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

The feds are looking for a few good meteorology buffs - the sort of folks who click their remote to The Weather Channel, not past it, and find conversation about the climate anything but small talk.

The National Weather Service is recruiting volunteer weather spotters who live in the Santa Clarita Valley and are willing to call its Oxnard forecast center to report storms, heat waves and other atmospheric conditions.

A training session will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at Santa Clarita City Hall, 23920 Valencia Blvd., in the Orchard rooms.

The annual workshop is held to recruit new volunteers and give a refresher course to those who already serve. Seats for the session should be reserved by Wednesday by calling Tim McClung, a meteorologist and warning coordinator for the National Weather Service, at [phone].

``With today's state-of-the-art technology, the weather service has great Doppler radar looking at the atmosphere. We have great satellites looking down from space,'' McClung said.

``We need someone on the ground telling us what's going on down there. That's where the weather spotters fill in the missing link.''

Across the country, about 15,000 people pitch in as National Weather Service-certified spotters, McClung said. ``We have more than 500 in Southern California,'' he said.

No special talents or skills are required to take the weather-spotter training. ``All they really need is a moderate to significant interest in monitoring the weather,'' McClung said.

Stevenson Ranch resident Robert Footlik serves the National Weather Service as a cooperative observer, a volunteer much more involved than a weather spotter. Rather than simply phone the NWS to report on conditions like thick fog, lightning strikes or high winds, Footlik has automated equipment at his home that measures, records and transmits climatological data hourly and around the clock.

``My station is computerized, and it's inspected (for accuracy) by the National Weather Service,'' Footlik said.

``I have an industrial-quality weather station with industrial-quality sensors,'' he said. It's not like I have a thermometer in my back yard. It's pretty sophisticated.''

A weather spotter makes much less of a commitment. ``A weather spotter is mainly for letting the National Weather Service know of certain special weather events, like if you have a tornado or winds above 40 mph or 50 mph,'' Footlik said.

Most National Weather Service spotters monitor and report conditions in the community where they live, not where they work. They are given a toll-free NWS phone number to call in their reports, McClung said.

``There's a format we prefer they follow. We need to know where they are and what it is they're seeing, when it occurred and whether it's still going on,'' McClung said.

``The whole point is to call us right away because we (may) have a warning out and we can (use) their report to verify that warning,'' he added.

The ranks of volunteer weather spotters run the spectrum of age and gender. ``I think we have a spotter who's 7. When I was 5 years old, I was a type of weather spotter,'' McClung said.

``Sometimes kids are the best weather spotters because they remember to call when the weather acts up. Sometimes adults are too busy to remember to call,'' he said. ``Retired citizens make good weather spotters because they're home more than someone who works 40 hours a week.''

Depending on the call volume at NWS headquarters, spotters may give their reports on a recorded line or speak to a staffer. Sometimes the NWS turns the tables and calls spotters on its registry to get a report, McClung said.

``Say, for example, we're looking at our radar and we see a bad storm over Santa Clarita. We have a couple spotters in the area, but we haven't heard from them. We'll call them and get a report from them,'' McClung said.

Since weather spotting is voluntary, the NWS doesn't require any specific length of service. It always welcomes volunteers from rural communities, he noted.

Footlik, a bioanalyst for a medical center, has been a cooperative observer for the NWS since 1989. His weather station feeds data - including temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, cloud ceiling and wind speed - to The Weather Channel and forecasters here across the country.

``There really was no real-time weather reporting from the Santa Clarita Valley until I started this,'' he said.

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1-2) (Photo 2 ran in SAC Edition only) Robert Footlik volunteers for the National Weather Service and telecasters. Above, he checks the weather station in his yard. Below, he works at his computer.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News