Beltrami County to host free Skywarn severe weather spotter training

Hail cores, rotating clouds and sudden wind damage can turn a northwest Minnesota storm into a neighborhood emergency in minutes, and Beltrami County wants more people ready to report what they see before that happens.

Beltrami County Emergency Management will host free Skywarn severe weather spotter training Thursday, May 21, 2026, at 6 p.m. in the Beltrami County Boardroom at 701 Minnesota Ave. NW in Bemidji. The session is open to the public and is aimed at residents who want to learn how to identify dangerous weather and relay timely reports to the National Weather Service. County Emergency Management Director Christopher Muller is the contact for more information at chris.muller@co.beltrami.mn.us or 218-333-8386.

Skywarn is the National Weather Service volunteer spotter network, a program that dates to the early 1970s and includes between 350,000 and 400,000 trained severe weather spotters nationwide. NWS training is free and typically lasts about two hours. Classes cover severe thunderstorm structure, important storm features and safety concerns, with an emphasis on recognizing hail, wind damage and signs that a tornado may be developing.

The timing matters in Beltrami County, where storms can move quickly across rural roads, lakes and widely spaced neighborhoods before damage is fully visible from emergency dispatch centers. Faster local reports can help forecasters sharpen warnings and give county officials a better sense of where people may be facing downed trees, damaged power lines or blocked roads. In a county where one storm can hit Fourtown and another can tear through the Bemidji area, those ground-level observations can make the difference between a broad warning and a more precise response.

Beltrami County has already spent this spring pressing the issue of severe-weather readiness. Minnesota Severe Weather Awareness Week ran April 13-17, and statewide tornado drills were scheduled for April 16 at 1:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. CDT. County officials are also updating the Hazard Mitigation Plan with U-Spatial at the University of Minnesota Duluth, a process that looks at flooding, tornadoes, windstorms, winter storms, extreme temperatures, wildfire and drought.

The county’s urgency is not abstract. Beltrami County confirmed an EF1 tornado crossed near Fourtown on June 22, 2025, and officials also described severe wind damage in the Bemidji area that left fallen trees, downed power lines and structural damage behind. County Emergency Management also notes that it does not own outdoor warning sirens, but it does activate sirens for communities and facilities that have them, while residents who want text or phone alerts must enroll through Everbridge, which replaced CodeRED in 2025.