Amateur meteorologists in Southwest Florida have a new outlet for their weather-watching obsession.

With weather here often going from beautiful to beastly in minutes, plenty of local people become fascinated — and perhaps a bit obsessed — with following and documenting every heavy thunderstorm, tornado watch or tropical storm warning.

WINK News has tapped into that fascination with its new Weather Watchers program, which has volunteers serving as the “eyes and ears” throughout the region on changing weather conditions.

Since the program started in June, more than 1,000 volunteers have signed up as Weather Watchers, which WINK describes as “a community of weather enthusiasts connecting real people to real weather across Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry, DeSoto and Glades counties.”

A series of training sessions have been held, featuring presentations by WINK meteorologists including Chief Meteorologist Matt Devitt, Zach Maloch and Josh Green, with a focus on helping volunteers understand weather events such as thunderstorms and tropical storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning strikes, drought and wildfires.

More than 225 people attended the Collier County training session in Naples on Aug. 5, and Devitt told the crowd that their input as volunteer weather observers can be “so beneficial” in helping the WINK team report during major weather events.

“The great thing about this program is, as much as I would love to tell you that we have a million sensors in Southwest Florida and we know what’s happening in every spot of our area, we don’t,” Devitt said. “But that’s the power of where you guys come in with your observations and your pictures: They can literally become official documentation for the National Hurricane Center, for the National Weather Service, those observations that you can take for us.”

Maloch said that getting information from Weather Watchers in real time can help keep the communities WINK covers updated as conditions get worse, using flooding from heavy rainfall as an example.

“Flooding, [if] we get five- or six-inch per hour rain rates,” he said. “What’s it doing to your community? Is there flooding on your roads? Are there drainage issues that we need to be in conversation about with our news department? Those are the big things that could evolve with our conversations with you guys.”

Weather Watchers can submit sunrise and sunset photos and videos, rain totals and severe weather phenomena or damage via a private Facebook page that has been created for the group. Photos and videos may be shown on air and online.

Information about becoming a Weather Watcher can be found at winknews.com.