Weathering the Weather

I've heard it more times than I care to count - Viewers are most interested in the weather, so even though the homepage of a given site will be the first to come up, many will click immediately on the weather tab.

So one of the main functions of a person like me is to help viewers get the information they need as quickly as possible when it comes to weather alerts.

I've seen it happen that on a day when there is severe weather, views on a news Website will skyrocket.

Where I currently work, one of our busiest online days involved a very nasty winter storm that dumped a huge amount of snow on the area. We hit more than 200,000 views on that day alone.

And the weather has been very freaky these last couple of years. From the record-breaking snowfall amounts in my part of Virginia in 2009/2010 to the kind of nasty, super humid heat you don't normally see this far inland. Now we're got the kind of biting cold I haven't felt since I moved out of New Jersey more than a decade ago.

The effects of this crazy weather will be felt on all levels of society from the outdoorsy who like to hunt but won't have as large an opportunity to do so because of falling wildlife populations, to people looking at supplies in the grocery stores where prices are climbing, to people born under that wandering star who want to get away but can't afford it because gas has gotten so high...

So I understand that people want to know what the weather's going to do. Then there are the calls from people asking, "Is it gonna storm tomorra?" Well, when they start giving you their exact address and expect you to give them a weather forecast for that location, it's just a tad ridiculous.

I think my biggest beef with weather complaints comes when I get yelled at by a viewer because the station is cutting in every 15 minutes for a weather alert, say a tornado warning, and the person couldn't watch one of his or her favorite shows. The complaint being that the warning didn't cover that specific person's area, so why was the station interrupting his or her entertainment?

Take a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for example. Or that Tornado Warning. Or a Winter Weather Warning. First off, the National Weather Service is NOT going to issue one of these alerts just on a whim!

Like people who scream "global warming" (though the newer "global climate change" may be more applicable) is a myth, that it's just a fantasy, but fail to consider that scientists must use the Scientific Method to reach conclusions and that method requires data to be replicable... There is science behind what the NWS predicts.

Predictions may not be all that good days out, but within a couple of hours or even minutes, they're usually pretty accurate. There is no such thing as a "guaranteed forecast," because that's an oxymoron!

So we've got a warning out there. Even if it's a hyper-local one, say for just one town, there is still a need to get that information out to all. Such weather developments, when they occur, can be quite fast moving, which means they may affect more than just the initial place under the issued warning.

This is especially true for tornadoes, to which anyone who has lived in "Tornado Alley" will attest as they have seen such storms tear across the landscape at breakneck speeds, wreaking havoc and destruction in their wake.

Sometimes warnings only cover one part of an area, say the eastern section of a given county. And then a second one can crop up that covers a different portion of the same county for a different time frame... So more people affected!

The sheer numbers are what matter here. Television stations want to keep people safe, so even if your favorite show is being cut off by the weather alerts, it's still a heads up, especially in smaller markets that cover a "small" area. Why? Because of the size of the area, you're more likely to be affected by the same situation.

And in truth, the Shenandoah Valley is not that big.

In order to get the relevant information out in a timely fashion, news outlets are using numerous resources ranging from cut-ins on air to text alerts to statuses on Facebook.

For the text messages, a person can sometimes sign up to get alerts for just a specific place, say the county in which that person lives. But for the on-air and online stuff, they can't be that specific.

So if I put up a marquee on the Website, a Desktop Alert crawl or a status on Facebook announcing a weather alert, everyone is going to see the same message no matter where they are. I can't assign such a thing to only show itself to people living in a certain area or using a certain IP address.

On top of that, weather situations sometimes change so quickly, no one person can keep up. On those kinds of days, I will often put up a message saying, "Tune in for information as it becomes available" rather than try to update a marquee or status with every change...

Even I know seeing a ton of similar messages gets irritating, so I try and keep such messages to a minimum if I can... Though I've gotten in trouble for both sending out too many and sending out too few... If that makes any sense.

One the one hand, some people appreciate it and the higher-ups encourage frequent messages to the viewers. Then you have the people that find it annoying and say they are going to stop watching/reading because of it...

Caught between the viewers/readers and the boss. Never a fun position in which to find yourself. And so the fulcrum continues its endless dance to find balance...

The weather is always changing, as any meteorologist will tell you. You don't like the weather right now? Out in Columbia, Missouri, people say just wait a few minutes because it'll change.

And news people like me can only try to keep up. I'm no Data! Nor am I Watson. (Not even Sherlock's companion...) So I'm along for the ride just as much as anyone else in the community.

We want to help people know what's coming and how they can protect themselves from a potentially dangerous situation. And we will use every resource at our disposal to do so.

So keep a sailor's weather eye to the sky and an emergency TV or radio nearby!