STORM2K

The Riverside (California) Press-Enterprise

Field reporters Inland enthusiasts help keep tabs on Mother Nature 07:28 PM PST on Monday, October 31, 2005 By DARRELL R. SANTSCHI / The Press-Enterprise

On Christmas Day in 2003, Ken Kempter was on his way to a roadside rescue in Lytle Creek when he noticed that a torrent of rain was raising the creek to the top of its bank.

He picked up his cell phone -- as he does whenever he spots unusual weather -- and called in an alert to the National Weather Service's forecast center in San Diego. Moments later, a flash-flood warning was issued and the canyon was closed to traffic.

"I believe absolutely that saved lives," Kempter says.

Kempter, 38, of Calimesa, is a U.S. Forest Service fire battalion chief who spends much of his day scouring the San Bernardino National Forest in search of fires and other emergencies.

For the past seven years, he has doubled as a weather spotter. That makes him one of 1,000 volunteers in five Southern California counties, including 261 people in western Riverside and southwestern San Bernardino counties, who report severe conditions to the weather service.

"The basic thing is, all of our instrumentation does not detect everything, everywhere, all of the time," said weather service meteorologist Miguel Miller.

Miller, 37, works in the northern San Diego forecast office, where a team of meteorologists issue weather forecasts and storm and flood warnings for a 12,000-square- mile corner of Southern California, including western Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Eleven million people rely on those reports.

Array of Equipment

The forecasters have an impressive array of computer models fed by satellite photographs and infrared images, three weather balloons and 20 ground-based remote weather stations recording wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, dew point and atmospheric pressure.

Then there are the hilltop radars in San Diego and Corona.

They all are good at providing general information, Miller said.

"What they can't tell you is what is going on five miles down the road. A thunderstorm could be over on a hillside a mile away with flash flooding and horrible things going on while you're dry and sunny," he said.

Thunderstorms, especially summer storms, can build quickly and unpredictably, Miller said.

"They can be on the order of only five miles across and moving in who knows what direction," Miller said. "It's hard to get a handle on these things in time or space. Are they going to grow? Are they going to merge with another thunderstorm?"

One recent morning, the temperature was 81 degrees in the Arlington area of Riverside and winds were blowing at 30 mph, he said, while at March Air Reserve Base, about 15 miles away near Moreno Valley, it was 64 degrees and winds were calm.

At the Scene

Answers to the weather dilemma often come from the weather spotters, who undergo about an hour of classroom training -- some of them online -- and take a short test. Then they begin reporting extreme conditions, applying criteria that preclude minor conditions, whenever and wherever they encounter it.

"Part of my job deals a lot with weather," said Kempter, who has worked for the Forest Service for 21 years. "I was always in contact with the Weather Service for firefighting purposes, so I just started reporting incidents or severe weather events."

Kempter said he can use his radio to notify forest and fire officials, but nothing gets the word out faster than a weather-spotter report. That can generate a flood warning that is broadcast instantly by the Weather Service in San Diego to public and private agencies throughout California.

The day he reported the flooding in Lytle Creek, flash floods killed 16 people in nearby Waterman Canyon and Devore.

Brian Scroggins, 32, of Devore, has been a weather spotter for a year, but a fan of weather most of his life.

"I grew up in Upland," he said. "Upland is not known for Santa Ana winds, but we do get them. And we get severe storms. I remember the El Niño year of '82-83 was pretty powerful. It had quite an effect on me as a kid."

Scroggins has $550 worth of gauges on his roof that send constant reports to a remote receiver inside the house. Weather spotters needn't spend a dime if they don't want to -- they can report only what they see. But Scroggins is really into weather.

When he isn't working as a cable installer, he buys weather-station equipment from manufacturers and sells it on eBay.

"It's a tremendous market," he said. "Most of the people who buy stuff from me are from the (mountains of the western United States), where they get a lot of weather."

Spotter duty gives him a chance to put his equipment to good use.

"You have to have an absolute love for weather," he says. "All types, not just a hurricane snob."

The Holy Grail

Santa Ana conditions and winter thunderstorms are big in the Inland area, he said.

"The Holy Grail of weather is being part of chasing a storm," he said. "Like a tornado."

Kevin Martin, a 21-year-old Mira Loma security guard, does just that.

An amateur meteorologist who hopes to go professional with his own Internet-based forecasting service, Martin has chased tornadoes in Oklahoma and Texas the last two years.

On July 23, he found another one. In Hemet.

He and his brother, Brian, were following clouds in the Lucerne Valley when they noticed thunderheads building in the direction of the San Jacinto Valley. They gave chase, arriving at a stoplight at state Highways 74 and 79 just in time to notice a storm cloud begin to rotate.

"It was turning faster and faster," he recalled. "Then it happened right there" in the dairy country a mile and a half east of the Ramona Expressway intersection with Highway 79.

He called it in. To this day, he stays packed and ready to run when the clouds form.

So does Scroggins, who has been known to take a detour when he spots weather while on the road. But there are limits.

"If we have a set family outing, I am not going to take off and chase a storm," he said. "My wife is not nearly as into weather as I am."

HurriCat wrote:Do you mean just if weather-related? Otherwise, I have had some cartoons published in a national magazine. Recently (maybe still), my submission to the "Mikey Art" event over at the Discovery website (American Chopper) was used to link to the voting on the finalists. I'm in the top ten, but looks like I'm the lowest of the ten currently. OH WELL. In case you visit, my entry is American Screamer.

I do not have any friends who have been in the paper... but I do SUPPOSEDLY have a relative who was a POW in WWII and was in a photo in a 40's issue LIFE Magazine.

I'm not media-fodder myself. I always look like a jacka**. The camera loves my wife - I have never seen a bad picture of her. I even saw one of her when she was very ill. STILL looked good. Dang it.