TS/Hurricane Idalia thread

[crainbebo]

WPDQ (now WOKV) did the same thing during Hurricane Hugo in '89. They were on day power at night.

Flooding reported all over Pinellas County and the beach areas in Hernando County.

 

[frankberry]

WPDQ (now WOKV) did the same thing during Hurricane Hugo in '89. They were on day power at night.

Flooding reported all over Pinellas County and the beach areas in Hernando County.

They have a great daytime signal too. Too bad that the night pattern is a "pencil."

 

[davideduardo]

Tallahassee iHeart stations are simulcasting Operation Stormwatch via WFLA/Tampa.

iHeart united a number of stations, from Clearwater up to Tallahassee, in a little network. Good for them!

Can't get Valdosta streams to work - there may not be power.

Valdosta is one horrible radio market, so it's possible nobody has their own backup power and even more possible that they don't have a news staff.

 

[davideduardo]

Has anyone thought to do a quick comparison between what's going out over the airwaves vs what level of effort might be happening _right now_ on social media in that area?

The problem with social media is that one thing is a snapshot of your house or the street you live on, and another thing is accurate data on power outages, water levels, emergency facilities and the like in a whole town or county.

Amateur reporters can do more harm than good. And local governments and agencies may be overwhelmed by real issues and not able to spend time on social media with real facts.

 

[crainbebo]

IHeart did that last year for Ian, they've done it for Michael and Irma too. Multiple stations simulcasting based at WFLA-AM/FM Tampa. Kind of like the United Broadcasters of New Orleans after Katrina.

 

[alok]

I was listening to the stream of WFLA 970 Tampa & WFLA-FM 100.7 in Midway (Tallahassee), the same stream naturally was on both stations per their websites.
I am nowhere near where the hurricane was, the time I heard the stream was the night before the hurricane made landfall.
I was surprised during the coverage to hear the two men on the air say, make sure you have a battery - operated radio.
Especially when they mentioned power outages that were occurring.
What all the talk about streaming vs broadcasting, it surprised me to hear that. I realized too it was the right thing for them to say.

Also the two were doing an excellent job, part of iheart they mentioned. They were providing very good info for people in the affected areas. I have no idea where it was originating from, I want to say Tampa, but I am not sure.

Al

 

[PTBoardOp94]

The Weather Channel is showing video of what appears to be a short broadcast tower on the ground, dateline Perry, FL.

I suspect the tower was the one which broadcast WNFK/Perry. If so, it previously stood 299 ft.

 

[crainbebo]

A station that had no stream and hardly any website presence. In Hurricane Alley, that's unacceptable in 2023. All Perry stations are owned by Dockins Communications, except for nearby religious outlets.

 

[Battenkill50]

FPREN: Florida Public Radio Emergency Network FM

WUWF FM - Pensacola 88.1
WFSU FM – Tallahassee 91.5
WKGC FM – Panama City 90.7
WUFT FM – Gainesville/Ocala 89.1
WJCT FM – Jacksonville 89.9
WMFE FM – Orlando 90.7
WUCF FM – Orlando 89.9
WMNF FM – Tampa/St.Pete 88.5
WUSF FM – Tampa/St.Pete 89.7
WFIT FM – Melbourne 89.5
WQCS FM – Ft. Pierce 88.9
WGCU FM – Ft. Myers/Naples 90.1
WLRN FM – Miami 91.3
WDNA FM – Miami 88.9

 

[exdjted]

A station that had no stream and hardly any website presence. In Hurricane Alley, that's unacceptable in 2023. All Perry stations are owned by Dockins Communications, except for nearby religious outlets.

Fred Dockins operates everything from his home in Farmington, MO. Last I heard, his son Fred Jr was running Florida and living in Lake City. Those stations are too far away for Fred to worry about day-to-day. Look at his other stations. Most have no websites or social media to speak of either.

 

[Yabadabado1]

Stations in the past have frequently gone non-directional or used day power at night during emergencies. That does not need prior authorization, but there has to be post-event justification if the use of such facilities is questioned. However, I never saw such cases questioned.

DXers for decades have found lots of AM stations on at night with daytime or non-DA signals and made plenty of catches that way. Same with situations like floods, fires, tornadoes, etc. Back in the early 60's I likely logged more than 200 stations on with emergency facilities. In most cases, they were daytimers on at night.

What was the station out in North Dakota [I think] that broadcast at their daytime power 24/7 a few years ago when they had some horrendous flooding going on? I do remember picking them up one night in NE Ohio.

 

[Yabadabado1]

I can remember back in the 60s growing up in the Tampa Bay area of going through 4 pretty mean tropical storms and 4 hurricanes. Just remember looking out the window, which on that side of the house were cracked open for pressure equalization, and watching transformers explode [the electrical kind, not the cartoon/movie kind] and once the wind switched direction running to the other side of the house to open windows on that side. And running outside when the eye was over us to retrieve the screen door which had been blown off and left a perfect imprint in the bush next to the house, having all the pebbles on the roof stripped off....no idea why they used tar and than pebbled the roof, guess it must have been a "thing" when they built the house. And traveling up to our property in Pasco county and seeing all the boat docks and boats pushed up 800 feet or more from the rivers/canals/lakes from the storm surge. I don't think we had evacuation zones then but they area where I used to live is now considered Evacuation zone 5 so I guess it would take a storm like Harvey in Texas dumping a buttload of rain for it to reach my area. I do remember that it always drained away pretty damn fast, we had a huge series of canals/ditches near us that carried the water away pretty fast once it had stopped raining. I think the only time my parents seriously considered sending us off inland to our grandma or way up north to our property in New England was when Camille slowed down, wobbled a bit and started drifting towards Tampa Bay before resuming course north. Everybody freaked when that happened. And as a parting gift from Florida as we moved north, we ended up driving through Tropical Storm Becky in late July of 1970. I remember that any time tropical storms/hurricanes were on the way the music stopped and AM stations were wall to wall news/weather reports. I can remember that clearly caused it pissed me off that they stopped the music to report on what I considered, basically, a big windstorm.

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