KIRTLAND, Ohio -- The sound of severe weather sirens will become common once again as violent thunderstorms and tornadoes hit this time of year.

NewsChannel5's Paul Kiska explained that even with today's technology, weather experts still need you to help save thousands of lives.

Dozens of firefighters, police officers and playground supervisors are among the people taking a course at Lakeland Community College to become official Skywarn weather spotters.

Even with advances in technology, weather spotters still help save lives and property with their trained observations.

"Because there's a lot of different things in thunderstorms, you could think it's a funnel cloud or tornado. But once you get training you're better educated. It's valuable to us to have people who are trained," said Gary Garnet with the National Weather Service.

Weather spotters learn how to spot funnel clouds that usually rotate out of the wall cloud on the backside of a thunderstorm. They also learn that northeast Ohio averages eight tornadoes per year.

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But the region also gets pounded by many dangerous thunderstorms like one in Massillon last spring that contained downbursts or microbursts -- winds over 70 mph.

Jessica Krylow became a weather spotter five years ago. Now she's studying meteorology at Penn State University.

Monday night she learned a lot people are killed during tornadoes by flying debris, but flash flooding actually kills the most people in this country.

Most tornadoes strike northeast Ohio in May and June between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Because of the combination of weather spotters, new technology and media coverage, the number of people being killed by tornadoes has dropped significantly in the last 10 to 20 years.

For safety tips, check out weathernet5.com's expert section