Boy, How Things Have Changed…
Boy, what I wouldn’t have given to have had an ABC3340 Weather Blog and weather watcher reports growing up. Winter weather events like this were excruciating for hours just waiting on any morsel of information. If the event happened at the right time of day, you might get great reports from Joe Rumore at WVOK. TC and John Ed gave good information. And WERC didn’t do a half bad job.
There was the telephone weather forecast line at the National Weather Service. I called it every few minutes hoping for an update.
Then came Weather Radio in November 1976. That helped a lot, especially if J.B. was on duty. His Alabama Weather Updates and looks at the Alabama weather situation were greatly anticipated in a developing weather scenario.
The first good sign that things were happening were often that crews were sanding Shades Crest Road or Columbiana Road, or some such hill. The Red Mountain Expressway would close. Or Birmingham Police were closing the interstate system. Then you knew you were home free…no school tomorrow!
In this weekend’s event, we have had continuous reports from almost every community in Central Alabama thanks to our cadre of Weather Watchers and thousands of people monitoring the blog. It gave us real ground truth to what we were seeing on the radar. Thanks to everyone for their input.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I don’t remember so much waiting for winter storms as much as I do hurricanes. My dad had a Bearcat III scanner with a 162.55 Mhz crystal in slot one. Waiting on J.B. to update the hourly positions for storms like David and Frederick taught me patience. I plotted them on an Atlantic/Gulf hurricane map I ordered for free from the Weekly Reader at school. James calls J.B. a weather legend and that is a huge understatement. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
Trivia: Q: What was Joe Rumore’s favorite temperature? A: 69, of course (WVOK, AM-690)
Thanks, Bill!
January 21st, 2008 at 12:08 am
Bill,
I couldn’t agree more…I was at work Friday not and could not get the IM Skywatcher to work and I felt like my arms were cut off..I was having my son relaying me information…Of course I had all the radars and things at work, but I love the IM..so glad to be a part of it.I still plan on getting my Ham Radio License soon and that will be another fix for me…Regardless, Bill – like you growing up I did the same thing…I can remember when we first got cable in 1975 and it had a channel with nothing but the Temperature, Wind Speed, Humidity, Dewpoint, Rainfall and Time and the camera just scanned back and forth…During expected severe weather or snow events, I would just sit on the couch and watch it go back and forth…All I really knew then was to watch the temperature and the windspeed…I can’t imagine my kids doing something like that today. HA