The 35 or so intrepid weather watchers sat mesmerized viewing flash floods, funnel clouds and supercells while winds whipped and temperatures dipped in the streets of the City Different.

Fortunately for the group, though, their Saturday afternoon weather viewing was indoors, at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center, where they watched video and slide presentations and learned about various weather types as part of Skywarn Spotter training put on by the National Weather Service.

Spotters are part of a volunteer force that helps the agency learn more about weather systems across the state. They call in when they see suspicious or dangerous patterns developing, and are a great asset both to weather science and public safety, said Tim Shy, a meteorologist and class instructor.

"We could not get along without spotters, they're critical," Shy said. "In places like Santa Fe, especially, our radar is high over the ground and we can't see what's going on below it. Spotters help us accurately determine what's really going on with the weather."

Santa Fe currently has about 45 spotters, although not all of them actively report on weather systems, Shy added.

Among Saturday's new recruits were amateur weather enthusiasts, ham radio operators and a few folks who just wanted to understand the weird cloud patterns outside their houses.

Pat Boring, 67, who attended the class and lives in Valle de Arroyo Seco, said she and her husband decided to become spotters because they were curious about high winds and flash floods in their area, south of Española.

"Where we are there isn't any weather reporting, because it's very rural," Boring said. "We thought it would be great to be better educated."

William Beardsley, 63, a ham radio operator who lives in Santa Fe with "an unobstructed view all the way to the Sandia Mountains," said he was fascinated to learn about the variety of cloud types and what they mean.

"I can see things developing out there, and I think this was a great opportunity to learn what's really going on," Beardsley said. "I've been impressed by the volume of rain that can fall in such a short period of time."

During the class, Shy educated the group on some of the popular misconceptions when reporting weather information.

One of the things that untrained spotters often call in, he said, is erroneous wind speeds.

"Folks love to report wind speeds, but they actually don't know how fast they really are," Shy said. "At 50 miles per hour, you'd have problems keeping your footing. But people call and say 'yeah, we've got 100 mile per hour winds' all the time. And generally, that makes us a bit skeptical."

As part of the class, Shy showed a video of a reporter in a wind tunnel at various wind speeds. At 50 miles per hour, he had a hard time walking. At 100 miles per hour, he was stuck in place and couldn't lift his feet.

Shy said he's also baffled by people who try to drive through flash floods.

In one video, the trainees seemed equally amazed at that bad judgment, as some participants muttered "don't do it" before watching two men in a car drive into a flash flood near El Paso.

The pair's car washed sideways, flipped over and was totaled by the water, although both men survived.

Shy also cautioned the group to be wary of lightning.

In the United States, floods kill the most people out of all weather-related events, followed closely by lightning strikes.

In New Mexico, those two are flipped, and lightning strikes are the top weather-related killer, Shy said.

In a lightning storm, if the time between a flash and the bang of thunder is less than 30 seconds, he advises people to go inside for 30 minutes. That's called the 30/30 rule, he said.

"Lightning hits with the heat of the sun when it hits the ground," Shy said.

Thunderstorms, as well, come in a variety of shapes and sizes in New Mexico, and participants in the training learned how to identify which storms are dangerous and which are not.

The worst type of storm is something called a supercell thunderstorm, which is a rotating storm often associated with tornadoes.

Those are the kinds of storms that spotters can really help the Weather Service with, because it's very hard to tell a tornado-producing storm just from radar, said Jesse Haro, warning coordination meteorologist and co-instructor of the class.

"Tornadoes happen in New Mexico, mostly in the east, but we've had them in almost every county," Haro said.

Generally, the state gets between 12-14 mild tornadoes a year, with occasional larger ones every 10-15 years or so.

Having spotters who know what to look for can help people avoid those systems, Haro said.

"This really helps the National Weather Service and the local community," Haro said. "Skywarn spotters save lives every year."

The Weather Service generally holds somewhere between 25-30 training classes a year, with one or two in Santa Fe. Saturday's session was the year's second statewide, and the first in the City Different, Haro said.

The service loves to get all kinds of weather reports, although trained spotters tend to provide the most valuable information, Shy said.

"When people call us to report things they always seem to apologize, as if they're bothering us, and we find that sad," Shy said. "We're always happy to talk to people and we're always happy to get information."

For a schedule of upcoming training, or to report weather incidents, visit the National Weather Services Web site at www.weather.gov/abq or call the Albuquerque office at 243-0702.

Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.