• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Does any other stations do this for Sever Weather Coverage?

I am watching the Internet feed of a CBS affiliate in Central Kansas in Severe Weather coverage with several tornadoes on the ground. They have the usual map and what they are doing is brilliant. Counties with a Tornado warning are in red, and counties with a warning with one confirmed on the ground in purple. Has anyone else seen anything like this. I think that is great in helping to disseminate the information.
 
Never mind. the purple is a Flash Flood Warning. Regardless I think it would be a good idea to do what I thought they were doing.
 
I would say color-coding counties is very common here in Central Indiana (Indianapolis / Lafayette DMAs).

ABC affil WRTV6 - theindychannel.com is well known for a constant overlay (opaque; on top of regular programming) of a color-coded county map during severe weather of any sort.

Virtually all stations use such maps during actual weathercasts, newscasts, or special reports. (Some stations, while they do not color code specific counties, overlay transparent colored watch/warning boxes over a county map, still allowing viewers to quickly determine whether their county is affected.)
 
Indeed, WTHI and WTWO (Terre Haute), WRTV, WTTV, WXIN, and WTHR (Indianapolis), and WEHT and WFIE (Evansville) all run color-coded county bugs of some form when severe weather threatens. However, most remove it during their news coverage.

Looking at warning shading and radar data simultaneously is really annoying to my eye. Could be because I'm a bit weather nerdy.
 
Maybe this belongs on a seperate post but the Weather Channel belongs on the "basic tier" of a cable television lineup. particularly in areas where there are a lot of severe storms. Not everyone can afford the expanded package. One nice thing about having the local weather on TWC is the beeping that appears and the scrolling at the bottom of the screen.
 
Brian Donegan said:
Never mind. the purple is a Flash Flood Warning. Regardless I think it would be a good idea to do what I thought they were doing.

Well, sounds like that station needs to do some tweaking of what they're doing, and I don't mean what you suggest.
 
This is totally off topic but here in Charlotte we have stations that sensationalize their news and weather coverage. One of them calls their forecast center "Severe Weather Center 9". We rarely have what anyone could term severe weather. Except for March and April it's rarely even windy here! I wonder what the Chamber of Commerce thinks about this?
 
One of the main differences between the South (incl Charlotte) and Tornado Alley (Central U.S. heartland) is the time of year and time of day that tornados occur. Some of the worse tornados (with respect to loss of life) occur at night and during late winter and very early spring in the South. The South hasa very high # of people lost from these storms as opposed to the Midwest where the season is shorter and the fact that many tornados occur during the late afternoon early evening. It seems the tornado chasers focus on the Hearland in May.
 
While I agree that the original Weather Channel ought to be included in basic cable packages, in my area, they offer the SkyTrak Weather Network - a digital subchannel // Class A TV station programmed by the weather department of local NBC affiliate WTHR.

Generally, SkyTrak goes live and local with continuous coverage of any weather issues in Central Indiana. And I appreciate that they can focus just on local weather, as opposed to the national Weather Channel.

Some cable systems in the Indy metro also carry WISH (CBS) produced LWS (Local Weather Station).
 
Hi everyone:
Brian Donegan said:
I am watching the Internet feed of a CBS affiliate in Central Kansas in Severe Weather coverage with several tornadoes on the ground. They have the usual map and what they are doing is brilliant. Counties with a Tornado warning are in red, and counties with a warning with one confirmed on the ground in purple. Has anyone else seen anything like this. I think that is great in helping to disseminate the information.
First off, what station was this Brian?

Secondly, I was watching 24 here in Denver last night during a major storm. When it hit and as it was going through, FOX O&O KDVR 31 had both watches and warnings in a scrolling marquee which also contained the affected counties as well as a color coded diagram of the area in contrast to the rest of the metro area. They repeatedly shrunk the screen a bit to show this important information.

That said, it is interesting that Comcast didn't interrupt programming for these warnings (Then too, I was watching one of the local channels).

Cheers :D
 
I can answer the what station question.

The CBS station is KWCH Hutchinson-Wichita. They are the 400 pound gorilla in what is by geography one of the largest TV markets in the county, and the biggest to use satellite stations to relay programming to the outmarket. They, in the central part of the state, are the dominant TV station because of an enormous signal advantage (1500' tower just east of Hutchinson). They also do the news programming for the Wichita Fox affiliate. They have partnerships in Wichita with Journal's radio stations including the legendary tornado chasers at KFDI. (They trade back and forth during storm coverage)

Wichita is a very competitive market for weather, with a traditionally strong ABC affiliate with the metro's second best signal and an NBC affilate whose weather coverage has carried the station for years. The ABC station (KAKE) does weather for Clear Channel's Wichita group (even though they own the FOX station), and the NBC station (KSNW) is hooked up with Entercom. While the TV stations haven't gone to the extent Oklahoma City stations do with it, they're getting closer.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom