EARLY LOCAL WEATHER (BEFORE TECHNOLOGY)

[Tim-In-Houston]

There will be never be another Marcia Yockey who did weather in Evasnville, Indiana from 1953-1988. She spent her career mostly at WFIE except for most of the sixties at WTVW. Here is Marcia and her wet market board..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdLrRqg1VPw

Here she is doing weather on the moon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cHmAoFrOy4&feature=related

It's about 45 seconds into the compilation.

I'm glad someone mentioned Marcia Yockey. She used the hand-drawn maps up through the late-80s (I think she retired in 1988 or so, as did the maps). I asked Newsactive3 to post that Marcia Yockey weathercast, after seeing several classic WFIE opens and rejoins with her in them. She was a meteorologist, too...I believe she worked at the old Weather Bureau office in Evansville before going into television.

 

[buoy40]

I remember one of our weathermen in Albany , NY using magnets of clouds etc to keep items on the weather board map.
We also had Bob Gordon on WTEN -10 in Albany , NY wearing an Atlantic-Richfield Oil gas station attendants uniform he was know has the Atlantic Weatherman ,hat and all!

 

[donnyg]

I remember from my childhood, whenever there was severe weather, Channel 13 would put up a slide of a tornado or thunderstorm clouds and meteorologist Merle Kachenmeister would come on the phone live from the weather service office at Toledo Express Airport with the weather bulletin information. Some years later he would actually work at all 3 TV stations at one time or another as their weekend meteorologist. I learned the term anomolous propagation by watching Merle. What's anomolous propagation you ask? Simple, false radar echos. ;D

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

We also had Bob Gordon on WTEN -10 in Albany , NY wearing an Atlantic-Richfield Oil gas station attendants uniform he was know has the Atlantic Weatherman ,hat and all!

We had the same here...the role was played on then-WNBK/4 by Joe Finan, who ended up with a long radio career - he finished in talk radio at Akron's WNIR, then had a brief stint on liberal talk WARF until he passed away.

WNBK/4 is today's WKYC/3, the NBC affiliate (and once O&O).

 

[radiorob2.0]

There will be never be another Marcia Yockey who did weather in Evasnville, Indiana from 1953-1988. She spent her career mostly at WFIE except for most of the sixties at WTVW. Here is Marcia and her wet market board..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdLrRqg1VPw

Here she is doing weather on the moon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cHmAoFrOy4&feature=related

It's about 45 seconds into the compilation.

I'm glad someone mentioned Marcia Yockey. She used the hand-drawn maps up through the late-80s (I think she retired in 1988 or so, as did the maps). I asked Newsactive3 to post that Marcia Yockey weathercast, after seeing several classic WFIE opens and rejoins with her in them. She was a meteorologist, too...I believe she worked at the old Weather Bureau office in Evansville before going into television.

Marcia was a meteorologist before that was the fancy term. She was hired away from the Evansville Weather Bureau by a sponsor to do weather for WFIE when they signed on the air.

Marcia didn't retire, it was more of a falling out. The story I heard involved a new consultant or manager that didn't get Marcia and wanted a normal weather cast. They didn't understand Marcia was her own promotion machine attending many local events and frat parties. In a certain way, she was Evansville's version of Bob Barker among area college kids. Despite that, Marcia was exiled to the noon news.

Shortly after that, the TV show "Geraldo" did an episode on wacky weather people centered around Lloyd Lindsey Young, at the time doing weather at WOR where Geraldo was produced. Young suggested they call Marcia. The show's producers called WFIE and they were told Marcia wasn't interested. LL called Marcia to wonder why she wasn't interested and it was news to her. Marcia confronted WFIE management and told them where to go and how to get there with better accuracy of any GPS. She spent the rest of her year retired. Marcia suffered from Alzheimer's disease in her final years and past away ten years ago.

After her falling out with WFIE Marcia spoke to a broadcasting class. Her advice, "If you want to do something and management says 'no', F*** 'em do it anyway!" The general theme was "F*** Management!" that day. As I said, there will never be another Marcia Yockey.

 

[Toledo Eleven]

I remember from my childhood, whenever there was severe weather, Channel 13 would put up a slide of a tornado or thunderstorm clouds and meteorologist Merle Kachenmeister would come on the phone live from the weather service office at Toledo Express Airport with the weather bulletin information. Some years later he would actually work at all 3 TV stations at one time or another as their weekend meteorologist. I learned the term anomolous propagation by watching Merle. What's anomolous propagation you ask? Simple, false radar echos. ;D

I had forgotten about him until you jogged my memory with your post. I think he was on WSPD-AM radio as well.

 

[donnyg]

Hey Toledo Eleven,

Do you have any old video of Merle you could put up. It would be fun to see an old school forecast again. Just to refresh your memory, the weather team on WSPD AM at least during the 80's was Gil Gomez and Jan Sales I think was her name. I think they worked for a forecast service in Cleveland.

 

[Toledo Eleven]

Hey Toledo Eleven,

Do you have any old video of Merle you could put up.

No, I don't. There's a lot of video I wished I would have thought to record and save since I got my first VCR years ago, but I never recorded the news and most of the shows I saved I recorded without the commercials which I realize now was a mistake.

 

[drt]

WTVT Channel 13 in Tampa, either was one of the first stations in the U.S. or the first to have it's own radar; I had thought it was around 1961; although the following link indicates 1959; all the websites I've looked through do agree that WTVT was the first TV station in Florida to have radar.

http://www.big13.net/Weather/wxstory1.htm

I remember my dad telling me to watch Roy Leep to see radar (that was a new term to me) and it could show rain; I was young and naive and thought that I would actually see rain drops or rain falling on the radar; I do remember it was a small round screen and by today's standards, it now seems very primi.tive.

Wikipedia has an article on Roy Leep and all his "firsts" on WTVT

drt,
st. petersburg