By Kasey Fowler, Staff Writer

Garfield County residents know it is time to seek shelter when the storm sirens sound during severe weather.

But, many don’t know there is a team of volunteers out watching the weather to help make the decisions about sounding the sirens.

Although Mike Honigsberg, Garfield County and Enid Emergency Management director, uses radar in the storm center to follow storms, he said the storm-spotting network’s information is invaluable.

“Radar can tell us a lot, but we use the storm spotters,” he said. “Radar can’t tell us what is happening from the cloud base to the ground. What they tell me is gold compared to what I can read.”

When a severe storm is heading toward Garfield County, Honigsberg will alert the county spotting network.

“Any storm I feel may be severe, I will have people in the field,” he said. “If we have storms coming in from the southwest that have been severe, whether tornadic or not, I have spotters out. When we had the tornadoes in North Enid, it went tornadic in five minutes.”

A lot of the all-volunteer storm spotting network in Garfield County is made up of rural firefighters.

“As far as storm spotters go, we’ve got roughly 200 volunteer firefighters in the county,” said Clarence Maly, Waukomis fire chief. “All 12 fire departments in the county do spotting. When a storm comes in we have about 50 pairs of eyes on it immediately.”

Firefighters who work as storm spotters in the county are not storm chasers. They give information to the storm center but do not usually follow storms out of their area.

“We won’t chase them. We will chase them in our area. We will follow them in our district,” said Rusty Gray, of Hillsdale-Carrier Fire Department. “We will set up in an area. We try to position ourselves so we can see a wall cloud or tornado if it is going to develop in a storm. We try to not be too mobile. We need to be close enough to come back and warn our communities.”

The spotters take care of their home area and surrounding areas that may need their help.

“We take care of Bison,” Maly said, of his department. “We send a truck down there. If something is bearing down on it, we will turn on the P.A. and tell everyone to seek shelter. They don’t have storm sirens or anything down there. We will go where we are needed.”

Storm spotters in the county take care of each other as storms come through the area.

“It works out really well because we watch the surrounding communities and they watch us when something comes in,” said Phillip Ott, Waukomis Police Department chief.

Spotters often take personal vehicles out to help with their work, but if needed they will take fire vehicles out.

“We usually go out in our own personal vehicles, but if it is going to be very bad with hail we will go out in a grass rig,” Gray said. “It is an all-volunteer fire department. We want to reduce the risk to ourselves as much as possible. I don’t like to take out the fire trucks if I don’t have to because it wastes taxpayers’ dollars.”

Many spotters use little special equipment when they spot.

“A lot of our guys don’t have the fancy equipment because it is expensive. The people with all the equipment are usually scientists,” Hon-igsberg said. “They aren’t concerned with the wind speeds. They can monitor that themselves. They are more reliable watching what is going on. Most are just out there with their two-way and a laptop, that is what they feel they need.”

Gray said he usually goes out with very little equipment, if any.

“I have pretty good radar on my phone,” he said. “It is about five minutes behind. I sometimes take my laptop, and I can get Internet through my phone. A lot of times we are activated really fast and don’t have a lot of time to gather equipment.”

When the storm spotting network is active they will look for dangers developing in the storm.

“The spotters indicate when there is a significant lowering, a wall cloud within the storm,” Honigsberg said. “Radar updates every five minutes. A lot can go on in those five minutes. They are the key to knowing what is going on.”

Ott said spotters will look for several factors in a storm to report to the storm center.

“We are trying to figure out how fast the wind is blowing, the size of the hail, if there is any rotation in the clouds and if there are any wall clouds forming in the storm,” he said.

“We also look at the rainfall because we have flash flooding around here,” Maly said.

Although storm spotters are trained and are out in the storms to protect the communities in the county, it can be dangerous.

“There is no point in getting hurt,” Gray said. “Even when we are in community owned vehicles it is scary. It is very dangerous. We all have family and kids. There are times you should just stay back. It is easy to get wrapped up in them. It is pretty easy during the day, but it is very dangerous at night.”

The storm spotting network provides valuable information to the storm center and communities to help protect lives during severe weather.

“Without our spotters we can’t protect this city and all the cities in this county. I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it without the spotters,” Honigsberg said. “I wouldn’t want anyone but these guys and gals out there with me. They realize the importance of what they are doing. Their information can be life or death.”