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Severe weather coverage


ThunderJay27

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Watching severe weather coverage across the 4 stations and 6abc & Fox 29 had the best coverage. 6 has a great advantage with having Adam Joseph and Cecily Tynan both there. CBS 3 struggled. Kate Bilo needed help. She had to take frequent breaks. 29 had Ian Page & Lucy Nolan help Scott Williams and they did a terrific job keeping things going. NBC10 to me had very weak coverage in information and trying to break down what was going on. Sheena Parveen was by herself and also could've used help. Jim Rosenfeld came in but there's no real fluidity.

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10's live radar seems inferior to everyone else's in the area. Is that because of the technology or is it the meteorologist's inability to show what they have?

 

They run the same system the other three stations run. Dunno what you are looking for but they seemed to be doing the same thing everyone else was doing.

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If they're running the same system, the other stations show more features on tv, especially 6. The way Adam & Cecily were able to use their radar features are more like what I've seen Mid-West stations do.

I didn't see any of the stations coverage but it sounds like the stations just like playing with their toys. There really isn't a need to use a touch screen or the 3D visualizations of your city with rain falling in a weather cast. If your like me I would rather you just stick to the forecast and show a simple radar map. Sure those tools are neat but they don't really add anything to your product.

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I watched everyone's coverage and I didn't see anyone do anything anyone else wasn't doing with the exception of 3 which did some 3D elevation models of the storms. TBH it really doesn't do much for the average viewer but it looks cool. Everybody cycled through the precip, velocity and hail readings. If you ask me I think 10 did a better job with street level zooms than anyone else did.

 

On a side note I should have been a bit more specific with 6. While they are using WSI's Max Weather like everyone else, they also have their own in-house radar that's driven by Baron Weather, and that's a different animal software wise, but still they were doing the same thing as everyone else.

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I watched everyone's coverage and I didn't see anyone do anything anyone else wasn't doing with the exception of 3 which did some 3D elevation models of the storms. TBH it really doesn't do much for the average viewer but it looks cool. Everybody cycled through the precip, velocity and hail readings. If you ask me I think 10 did a better job with street level zooms than anyone else did.

 

On a side note I should have been a bit more specific with 6. While they are using WSI's Max Weather like everyone else, they also have their own in-house radar that's driven by Baron Weather, and that's a different animal software wise, but still they were doing the same thing as everyone else.

Probably the only benefit 6 had was the ability to control their own radar. The other stations that rely on the NWS have to wait six minutes for a full update. I believe it takes six minutes for them to take a complete data set at all available elevations while if your operating your own you could probably set it at 0.3° and get updates much quicker.

 

The dual polarity (3D) data sets are useful to the meteorologists but I think they could easily screw up the viewer.

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I think 6 does a great job using all the different features of the radar, and they use them on a continual basis, not just when there's a tornado warning.

 

The only thing that bothers me about 6's radar maps is that someone has to manually choose a street to put a name on it, for example if they zoom into a city/borough and want to label a street. Of course, thinking about it, maybe most maps are like this and I'm just too used to Google-type things.

 

Since I'm in the Lehigh Valley and the tornado warnings were up here this week, I put on WFMZ. They had Ed Hanna & Mark Shannaberger on-screen while Amanda Cox operated the radar. They rely on the NWS radar and I've always felt their tech was pretty basic, but they were using the storm track graphic on screen with times & locations and I've never seen them do that before. Lately they've been able to show the lightning strikes and also rotations on the radar on-screen.

 

Still, though, nothing beats Adam Joseph's marathon, solo tornado warning mode from last week. One of the best meteorologists in Philly, if not the country, IMO.

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Does anyone have video of Adam Joseph's tornado-cast?

 

 

Still, though, nothing beats Adam Joseph's marathon, solo tornado warning mode from last week. One of the best meteorologists in Philly, if not the country, IMO.

 

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Adam Joseph broke in at 2:00 on 6, and did live coverage by himself for over a 1/2 hr before Cecily joined him. I felt sorry for his throat. I'm not the biggest Adam Joseph fan, because of how he acts on facebook when called out on getting things wrong, but he did a great job

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With last week's storm, they all sure saved money by gassing up the news vans enough to reach East Greenwhich. There were other equally damaged areas without power for just as long, including southern Camden and Burlington Counties. Perhaps they couldn't find a local official who would have blamed it on Christie.

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Probably the only benefit 6 had was the ability to control their own radar. The other stations that rely on the NWS have to wait six minutes for a full update. I believe it takes six minutes for them to take a complete data set at all available elevations while if your operating your own you could probably set it at 0.3° and get updates much quicker.

 

The dual polarity (3D) data sets are useful to the meteorologists but I think they could easily screw up the viewer.

 

~6 minutes is the standard time, but in events of inclement weather the NWS has the ability to speed up the return time so that an update is churned out like, every 3 or 4 minutes or so (not too sure on an exact time, but it definitely is quicker). Additionally, setting the radar angle to something as low as 0.3° will not necessarily mean quicker updates. Having it set that low can actually be a bad thing since the radar beam is near parallel to the ground and will pick up a whole bunch of useless clutter. The image would be clearer, more accurate, and more representative of what's happening near the ground, yes, but it will also pick up on stuff that will just get in the way. For a dense metro area it especially doesn't make sense.

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~6 minutes is the standard time, but in events of inclement weather the NWS has the ability to speed up the return time so that an update is churned out like, every 3 or 4 minutes or so (not too sure on an exact time, but it definitely is quicker). Additionally, setting the radar angle to something as low as 0.3° will not necessarily mean quicker updates. Having it set that low can actually be a bad thing since the radar beam is near parallel to the ground and will pick up a whole bunch of useless clutter. The image would be clearer, more accurate, and more representative of what's happening near the ground, yes, but it will also pick up on stuff that will just get in the way. For a dense metro area it especially doesn't make sense.

Sorry I was using 0.3° as an example. I was guessing that if they were only doing one sweep that they could get results back a lot quicker than if they waited for it to cycle the full elevation.

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~6 minutes is the standard time, but in events of inclement weather the NWS has the ability to speed up the return time so that an update is churned out like, every 3 or 4 minutes or so (not too sure on an exact time, but it definitely is quicker). Additionally, setting the radar angle to something as low as 0.3° will not necessarily mean quicker updates. Having it set that low can actually be a bad thing since the radar beam is near parallel to the ground and will pick up a whole bunch of useless clutter. The image would be clearer, more accurate, and more representative of what's happening near the ground, yes, but it will also pick up on stuff that will just get in the way. For a dense metro area it especially doesn't make sense.

 

Actually you can get one tilt scanned in about a minute (even less if you're using one of the airport TWDRs) and if you're tapping directly to the NWS servers for updates there's really no real delay in getting that information on the screen.

 

And yeah 0.3 is usually pretty useless in an area like this.

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  • 1 year later...

Some of the local meteorologists and newspapers are getting hammered for their coverage of Tropical Storm Hermine, saying the "hype" ruined the Labor Day weekend. Gotta love social media. It also happens when they "over-predict" a winter storm. Bottom line is the public stays safe and sound, but people still want to complain.

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  • 11 months later...

Does it bother anyone when the Philly local stations send reporters to cover severe weather stories elsewhere? WPVI sent Chad Pradelli to Houston last week. He had a few stories here and there. At times, he almost seemed like he was in the way. Now it looks like they're sending Brian Taff to Florida to cover Irma. Greg Argos from KYW is already in Miami. I know it's big news, but there's plenty of national coverage already. No need to put more people in harm's way.

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Well, in some cases they’ll double as relief for their sister stations. I streamed KTRK extensively last week and Pradelli was doing reporting for them. (There were a few from the other O&Os as well.) Tim Furlong is covering the storm for WCAU but he’ll also be reporting for WTVJ. I imagine Argos will do the same for WFOR. Taff is the only one who I'd say would "get in the way" but since WPLG has no real sister stations anymore (are they still tight with Graham?) I wouldn't rule out him also helping them out.

 

One thing I'd note is that sometimes you can get an interesting or even valuable local perspective. The example I'd cite is when Nelson Mandela died; Jim Gardner had been on vacation in South Africa a week prior and was able to cite some of the places he'd visited, like Mandela's jail cell. Another example would be Sandy Hook - they brought up that Cecily Tynan had grown up there.

 

It might not be a local story but there are always interesting angles to explore.

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Does it bother anyone when the Philly local stations send reporters to cover severe weather stories elsewhere? WPVI sent Chad Pradelli to Houston last week. He had a few stories here and there. At times, he almost seemed like he was in the way. Now it looks like they're sending Brian Taff to Florida to cover Irma. Greg Argos from KYW is already in Miami. I know it's big news, but there's plenty of national coverage already. No need to put more people in harm's way.

 

Surprised WPVI didn't send Bob Brooks. He came from WTVJ.

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  • 1 year later...

Severe weather coverage today that began in the 5pm hour and continuing. Surprised NBC10 went to Nightly News at 6:30, while 6ABC, CBS3, and FOX29 stayed with weather coverage.

 

6 went to WNT in progress at 6:42, 3 went to EN in progress at 6:45, and 29 returned to its game show at 6:46. 10 at some point broke back in.

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