Community Corner
No Snowfall Totals Available for Fort Lee, Trained Spotters Needed
The National Weather Service reported snowfall totals for some towns in Bergen County as of Monday night, but it says it has no trained weather watchers in Fort Lee.
Fort Lee residents hoping to learn just how much snow fell in town during Sunday's blizzard may have been disappointed to learn that the National Weather Service had no specific data available for the borough as of Monday night. The reason: there are no trained, volunteer spotters in Fort Lee.
The National Weather Service (NWS) did report that a whopping 29 inches were on the ground by early Monday morning in Lyndhurst, and that Bergenfield had just over 20 inches. Paramus had seen about 17 inches as of Monday morning, while Lodi had just over 27 inches.
But calls to the NWS's regional office revealed that Fort Lee doesn't have trained spotters, and that the only data available in Bergen County represented measurements in Lyndhurst, Lodi, Rutherford, Oakland, Garfield, Bergenfield, Glen Rock Ridgewood, Paramus and River Vale.
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"Usually you would have to go by the town closest to get an idea of how much snow may have fallen for a given event," said Gary Conte of the National Weather Service's regional office in New York.
Spotters are trained volunteers who report information such as snowfall totals to the National Weather Service, and not all towns have them. The NWS uses the data provided by the spotters or local officials to create a report such as the one released Monday.
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Spotters are trained through the NWS's Skywarm program, a nationwide network of volunteer weather watchers who report hazardous weather to local NWS offices. Skywarm volunteers are trained by NWS personnel to recognize features associated with rapidly developing, mature and dissipating storms, which can potentially cause hazardous conditions. Spotters also provide reports of heavy snow, heavy rain and flooding.
Volunteer spotters need to go through a free training session, offered at various locations each year by the NWS from mid-March through the summer. People who take the training qualify as beginner or advanced spotters and are provided with materials such as manuals and measurement tools. Anybody can take the free training and become qualified spotters, and the NWS says it's always looking for people.
The weather service posts information on when and where training sessions are offered on its website, Weather.gov/NYC.
The NWS doesn't provide information on how many spotters may have been trained at some point for a given town, but if there are spotters out there who have been through the training, they will update the data.
The National Weather Service reports the following snowfall totals for Bergen County:
Updates and other detailed weather information can be found at Weather.gov/NYC.
Location
Total Snowfall (inches)
Time of measurement
Lyndhurst
29.0
Monday, 2:30 a.m.
Lodi
27.1
Monday, 7 a.m.
Rutherford
23.0
Monday, 8 a.m.
Oakland
22.0
Monday, 7:30 a.m.
Garfield
21.8
Monday, 3:31 a.m.
17.0
Monday, 8 a.m.
River Vale
14.0
Monday, 9:30 a.m.
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