Guthrie and Adair County residents recently received an opportunity to learn how to better identify storms and severe weather.

National Weather Service of Des Moines Meteorologist Craig Cogil taught the storm spotter training class to over 30 attendees. He went over what to watch out for, what to report, how to report and when people should report what the weather is doing. Cogil also talked about the different kinds of storm cells, and how they vary, adding information about different signs that can help the trained eye to see how a thunderstorm or tornado may form.

Attendees also learned about wall clouds, funnel clouds, scud clouds and shelf clouds. Wall and funnel clouds are usually precursors to tornadoes, though they don’t always precede a twister, and scud and shelf clouds can be confused for the other two.