Weather Coverage and Radars
> must say CBS 46 NEWS was all over this one, but its really sad
> when the main anchors don't know where Morrow,GA is
> located.
The anchors are still relatively new to town. They were transfered here from sister Meredith stations (Rich Noonan is from WHNS Greenville/Spartanburg, and Stephany Fisher is from their station in Portland, OR).
> The Storm Tracker 3-D Radar seems to be the best thing
> at the station. I heard Gene Norman mention they are the
> only station in town with a storm chaser van loaded with
> technology.
Weather is WGCL's strong point. While they care less about news, they care about the weather.
> Fox 5 also claimed to have at least one storm chaser van (one of them
> was being used by someone who called in and got on the
> air.
Independent storm chaser most likely (does not work for the station)
> I was at a friends house and they had it on channel 5, and
> as usual they were all over it, as always. As far as channel
> 46's 3-D radar, I can only say two words: "Eye-Candy". It is
> information from the NWS just shown in a fancy way. Infact,
> ALL of the stations have been using the Peachtree City
> Nexrad alot here lately. What happened to the good'ol days
> when 2, 5, and 11 used to show nothing but there own doppler
> radars? 2 and 11 still do most of the time.
WSB, WAGA, and WXIA (as well as CNN and The Weather Channel) use a radar system called Titan. This system utilizes the NWS NEXRAD radar network, as well as the doppler sites that each individual station owns (WSB has their Haralson County site plugged in to their Titan, and WXIA has a site at Six Flags plugged in to theirs). WAGA still has their old Doppler 2000 system running seperately (they call it Storm Tracker), although WSB and WXIA have discontinuied their old systems.
WGCL uses the VIPIR system. It uses NWS Nexrad as well. WGCL has their old radar as well.
Both systems have all of the bells and whistles, from 3-D tilt to satelite photo maps (similar to Google Earth).
> I remember the days when WSB had there doppler site behind
> "White Columns", and that it would pickup so much ground
> clutter that it would show that it was always storming
> inside I-285.
Radar systems at that time had no way to "cancel" the ground clutter, like today's systems do.
> Or WAGA with the all black display and
> invisible sweep, or even better, Johnny Beckman on WXIA
> changing the radar's operating range live on air? If there
> was rain, he would always to do that! Now, it's street level
> mapping and "3-D", and using the NWS feed and claiming it's
> your own.
All radars had black backgrounds then. Radar technology was still somewhat primitve at the time.
> I just pray that the Atlanta market doesn't become like the
> Tampa market, where they beat you to death with who has the
> best weather forcasting and coverage.
Atlanta has a different nature than other markets. Atlanta TV stations employee southern hospitality most of the time. Attacks have been very minimal so far, but with impending changes at WSB-TV in the next few years with the coming retirements of Monica Kaufman, John Pruitt, and longtime VP/GM Greg Stone, it will be interesting to see how the market changes, and whether or not anything will get nasty