On Saturday afternoon while many Islanders were outside enjoying the warm air on a bright spring day, nine people sat inside the West Tisbury fire station and talked about storm clouds and how they could help national forecasters better predict the weather and possibly help save lives and property. It was a training session for the National Weather Service SKYWARN program.

William Babcock, a meteorologist and SKYWARN program leader from Taunton, gave a three-hour talk about severe weather. Despite the many advances in forecasting technology such as Doppler, Mr. Babcock said human assistance is still needed. “This is a way the public can help us do a better job,” he said.

Those in attendance included Robert Maciel, who is the bridge tender for the Lagoon Pond drawbridge, and John R. Christensen, the West Tisbury emergency management director who is an instructor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

There was much talk of thunderstorms. Mr. Babcock spoke about differences between thunderstorms in New England and in the Midwest, where the storms can spawn tornadoes. He spoke about straight-line winds that are associated with some thunderstorms and can sometimes exceed 100 miles per hour. Using slides, Mr. Babcock described the kind of weather events that need to be reported to the Taunton center. He showed pictures of the interior of a thunderstorm and described how these storms produce powerful winds, tornadoes and downbursts.

Mr. Babcock affirmed the long-held local lore that when thunderstorms march toward the Vineyard from the west, they tend to fall apart. He said thunderstorms draw their strength from rising warm moisture and often weaken over cooler waters.

He said Boston averages 17 thunderstorm days a year. Hartford, Conn., has about 21.

Hail is the signature of the worst kind of thunderstorm, he said. Thunderstorms in the South may rise vertically to 50,000 or 55,000 feet above ground. Large storms in the Plains climb as high as 75,000 feet. New England thunderstorms are not as high and can rise to 30,000 to 35,000 feet. But they are still dangerous, he said.

Mr. Babcock spoke about the Worcester tornado of 1953, one of the worst tornadoes known, occurring in area that rarely sees such storms.

Flash flooding is not seen often on the Vineyard, but Mr. Babcock warned that it only takes two feet of water on a road to lift a car off its wheels.

He went down a list of conditions that meteorologists would like SKYWARN observers to report, described the technique for measuring snowfall (avoid measuring the height of drifts, and look for an average height in an open area).

At the end of the session, Mr. Babcock handed out SKYWARN membership cards to all who participated in the course. Each card listed the phone number to call when reporting a weather event.