Building Expertise to Chase Storms: COMET & Girls Who Chase
Spring Training is almost here! Soon we’ll get to enjoy our favorite American pastime: storm chasing. After a fantastic training last year, Girls Who Chase once again partnered with the COMET Program to provide trainees with the meteorological skills they need to knock their next chase out of the park.
Girls Who Chase members capture a storm in South Dakota.
What is “Spring Training”?
And what does it have to do with storm chasing? Everything (but actual baseball)! The Girls Who Chase Spring Training 2024 event provides foundational, operational, and accessible information and training material for storm chasers at all levels — from those who want to begin their chase education or brush up on the basics, to more advanced chasers wanting to learn more in-depth about specialized topics. Just like in baseball, we gather every spring to shake off the rust, refresh our skills, and get ready to hit a home run.
Jennifer Walton and Holly LaMontagne take photos of the Dominator chase vehicle sporting a new Girls Who Chase sticker, showing support for the initiative. Credit: JohnsonWX
Spring Training speakers are experts in their fields, making this one-day, virtual event a unique opportunity for in-depth learning from the best in the game (no more baseball puns, we promise).
Spring Training 2024 is on Saturday, March 2, 2024 at 9:30am to 7:00pm CT and is open to all! Register here.
What is Girls Who Chase?
Founded by Jennifer Walton, Girls Who Chase empowers and equips girls and women globally to pursue storms, the sciences and their passions.
They challenge storm chasing and weather communities to address gender equality and equity issues, amplify the voices of women and girls in these spaces, provide accessible trainings and resources, and foster a storm chasing community of diverse participants taking action together.
All female and female-identified storm chasers at the 2023 National Storm Chaser Summit.
“Weather is for everyone,” said Walton. “I believe it’s our job to ensure everyone has access to the resources, and information they might need to get out there and do what they love.”
Girls Who Chase is for everyone, as supporter Edgar O'Neal demonstrates. Credit: Edgar O'Neal
Learn more about Girls Who Chase and their mission to diversify the face of weather and science here.
“Weather is for everyone – and I believe it’s our job to ensure everyone has access to the resources, and information they might need to get out there and do what they love."
What is the COMET Program?
The COMET Program is a world leader in weather, water, and climate education and training. Founded in 1989 by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and primarily funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the COMET Program works to advance geoscience expertise worldwide through training and education, international capacity development, and university partnerships.
The COMET program is a world leader in weather forecaster training.
COMET MetEd
The COMET Program is best known for MetEd—their expansive catalog of over 1,085 free weather, water, and climate lessons in more than 20 geoscience topics across nine languages. These learning experiences are developed by scientists and educational designers in partnership with experts from top meteorological organizations, such as the National Weather Service. Lessons are open and free to all, so start learning today!
COMET MetEd offers free lessons for all your weather-related education goals.
Storm chasers looking for free resources to help them better understand how to identify and track storms may want to start with these three lessons:
International Capacity Development
The COMET ICD team poses in front of a 3D-PAWS station with students and faculty from an all girls school in Kenya.
The COMET Program is also renowned for their dedication to empower forecasters across the globe through their international capacity development (ICD) work. To expand surface observations in remote areas, the ICD team installed low-cost, sustainable 3D-Printed Automatic Weather Stations (3D-PAWS) in 15 countries; provides live, open access data to these stations; and trains technicians on how to use and maintain the stations.
This is great! How do I sign up?
Register here! The event is fully virtual and the cost is low to make it as accessible to everyone as possible. You can learn more about the event, view the schedule, check out the speakers, and more here. If you missed last year’s training, you can purchase the videos here (not required for the 2024 training).