We have really been pushing the online spotter report form (https://inws.ncep.noaa.gov/report/) as a way for our spotters to get their reports to us. During recent winter storms, we received over 200 reports sent to us from the form which were marked as "public" reports. Given that FEMA only takes snow reports from trained spotters, Coops or CoCoRaHS observers when it comes to qualifying whether or not a county met the requirements for disaster assistance for winter storms, we need to be able to easily differentiate trained spotter reports from public reports that come in using the form so we can provide the proper "trained spotter" attribution in the LSR that is sent.
I noticed that there's a new field on the last page of the online report form that says "If your NWS office has set up reporting groups, you can select one here." Perhaps this is a way to allow folks who are submitting a report to tell us if they are a trained spotter or other group, but I've not been able to find any documentation on how to set up groups for this. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Tony - RLX
