during these last few days of weather alerts across the midwest, and in pa. i hear our local tv stations showing us doppler radar with the storms hitting the counties involved. tom clark and his twin, kurt aaron are talking over each other, with tom clark saying, hey look the storms are in my neck of the woods... and kurt saying yea your right tom ,as he emulates clark with his hands and arms, and they saying, look at the rotation. tv 28 runs the alert locations warnings 20 minutes after the fact. nation wide on the weather channel, jim cantore, keeps saying what a beautiful site, as he shows the tornado ripping thru a town. how can something that kills people be a beautiful thing? ive said it before, and ill say it again.. we have no radio or tv stations that can give us up to date info on any storm alerts. forget noaa weather. they are off the air half the time, or the audio is so bad you cant understand it.cable and sat recivers are knocked off the air also. tornados, hurricanes, flooding. if we have to depend on these people for info, we are screwed.
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weather alerts
- Thread starter cowboy72
- Start date
Cowboy, we here in metro Quakake feel your rain, 
Over this past bizarre winter, and even into the spring, we found The Weather Channel to be so dead-on, a week ahead of time in some cases, that maybe THEY should be in charge of handling this end-of-the-world stuff.
Thing is, most of the population can't get them in a power outage.
It's left up to decimated radio with its annual battery testing to be the pacifier. But the nearest thing here we have is T-102. They're a fine station and sound like a real fun crew, but they're seldom playing here during times leading up to bad conditions. Stores and businesses often play them. And sometimes you can pick up a few do's and don'ts along with the emergency milk and smokes at a Turkey Hill ; those people are really tuned in.
IF they have something to tune in for a reference!
Instead, during those nighttime hours, we have Top Shelf Oldies on the speakers.
There's actually a curiously effective warning system on their chat room. Someone in West Virginia has bad stuff overhead. That goes to a chatter in Harrisburg, or to us here in suburban Quakake, and then to North Jersey, The Catskills, upstate NY, NYC, Long Island, and so on.
But even that form of alert system is obviously hit and miss. Top Shelf Oldies does not come with batteries included. Moreover, the TSO crew is not there to be a civil defense shelter. They play Oldies and have fun doing it. F-5 to them most likely means the fifth function button on the keyboard.
During a week when we've had tornados in Mahanoy City and two in the Cressona area, we didn't have as much as a siren go off here from the nearby firehouse. Signal-wise, regional WKOK Sunbury is useless after dark (and they're all sports anyway). KYW 1060 for years has been too busy squeegie-ing motorists' windshields on the flippin' Blue Route and the roads leading to and from the casinos to bother with the people in the sticks where a good half of their signal actually reaches.
So, weatherwise, we here in our patch have to rely on word-of-mouth during those times. Wet your finger ; stick it in the air.
Agree, though, that even a family completely enraptured, like a 500-pound sack of potatoes, by some of today's nighttime television fare shouldn't have to put up with a forecast scenario where everyone on the set is rolling in the aisles. Severe stuff should be the top story, period, and be treated as such throughout the newcast. Like the anachonistic Austin Powers, radio and TV have to get their mojo back with the immediate stuff FAR more often than once every disaster. Ex post facto death tolls are not doing anyone any good.
Over this past bizarre winter, and even into the spring, we found The Weather Channel to be so dead-on, a week ahead of time in some cases, that maybe THEY should be in charge of handling this end-of-the-world stuff.
Thing is, most of the population can't get them in a power outage.
It's left up to decimated radio with its annual battery testing to be the pacifier. But the nearest thing here we have is T-102. They're a fine station and sound like a real fun crew, but they're seldom playing here during times leading up to bad conditions. Stores and businesses often play them. And sometimes you can pick up a few do's and don'ts along with the emergency milk and smokes at a Turkey Hill ; those people are really tuned in.
IF they have something to tune in for a reference!
Instead, during those nighttime hours, we have Top Shelf Oldies on the speakers.
There's actually a curiously effective warning system on their chat room. Someone in West Virginia has bad stuff overhead. That goes to a chatter in Harrisburg, or to us here in suburban Quakake, and then to North Jersey, The Catskills, upstate NY, NYC, Long Island, and so on.
But even that form of alert system is obviously hit and miss. Top Shelf Oldies does not come with batteries included. Moreover, the TSO crew is not there to be a civil defense shelter. They play Oldies and have fun doing it. F-5 to them most likely means the fifth function button on the keyboard.
During a week when we've had tornados in Mahanoy City and two in the Cressona area, we didn't have as much as a siren go off here from the nearby firehouse. Signal-wise, regional WKOK Sunbury is useless after dark (and they're all sports anyway). KYW 1060 for years has been too busy squeegie-ing motorists' windshields on the flippin' Blue Route and the roads leading to and from the casinos to bother with the people in the sticks where a good half of their signal actually reaches.
So, weatherwise, we here in our patch have to rely on word-of-mouth during those times. Wet your finger ; stick it in the air.
Agree, though, that even a family completely enraptured, like a 500-pound sack of potatoes, by some of today's nighttime television fare shouldn't have to put up with a forecast scenario where everyone on the set is rolling in the aisles. Severe stuff should be the top story, period, and be treated as such throughout the newcast. Like the anachonistic Austin Powers, radio and TV have to get their mojo back with the immediate stuff FAR more often than once every disaster. Ex post facto death tolls are not doing anyone any good.
I have found that The Weather Channel is best for "nowcasting" than forecasting most of the time. If you follow their forecasting past 2 days out, you may run into trouble. I have seen quite a few forecasts go from mostly sunny skies to an all day rain event forecast within 3 to 4 days! Besides, TWC mimics The Discovery Channel much more these days with programing like "Storm Stories", "It could happen tomorrow", and their new series; "From the edge" with Peter Lik. They are not bad shows but would serve better on TDC. Too many times I have had severe weather here and wanted to see updates with radar and one of those shows is on!
I have found Accuweather and Weather Underground among the best sites.
I have found Accuweather and Weather Underground among the best sites.
With regard to weather "alerts" as opposed to weather "forecasts"; The EAS system and the pennsylvania EMNET system did a good job this week. They ran a number of severe Tstorm alerts...Tornado Warnings...and Tornado watchs; all well ahead of time. The primary audio is through internet connections with WVIA (statewide link) linked via special line as a backup if the internet connection goes down (it did not go down). This ran repeatedly on the Shamrock stations and the Geos stations (Tunkhannock and Towanda) as I heard many of the alerts go off. All of these send alerts for Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe, Wyoming, Susquehanna, Wayne, Columbia, Carbon, Bradford, and Sullivan counties.
Kevin
Kevin
- Status