Quote:
Originally Posted by JimJ[VT]
At least around here, whenever there's pretty significant weather, the SKYWARN net on 2 meters is what to be listening to. Yeah, there are no pretty graphics, but that's where the TV stations are getting their on-the-ground reports from anyway.
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I was referring to how ordinary people get severe weather information. Most people outside amateur radio do not know what SKYWARN is or where to hear the information from the network. Moreover, Doppler radar (or just plain radar, for that matter) is beyond the understanding of most nontechnical people as well. One of the television stations in Cleveland (the NBC affiliate on channel 3) calls its weather radar "X-Band Doppler", "Nexrad Doppler" and one other term that escapes me as I write this. These terms mean nothing to most people watching TV weather forecasts. I have often wondered why that station doesn't just do the weather forecast without all the fancy terminology to identify the radar gear, which, again, most people watching these forecasts could not care less about. I am an amateur radio operator and do in fact know a few things about the SKYWARN system, but when I watch the weather on TV all I want to know is the temperature and whether or not it is going to rain or snow outside my window, not the nuts and bolts of weather forecasting. The same TV station that bamboozles viewers with its "X-Band Doppler" weather radar has a meteorologist (where did that word ever come from, for crying out loud?--weather forecasting has nothing whatsoever to do with meteors) who used to work for CNN in Atlanta. The man, who does the television station's noon weather reports during the week, does a creditable job delivering the weather forecast, but, IMHO, he tells his viewers much more than they need to know about weather. For example, he almost always identifies the type of clouds that will accompany the weather for any given day: cirrus, cumulus and whatever. For crying out loud (again), I don't know a cirrus cloud from a hole in the ground. This is also the reason I do not watch the news on Cleveland's FOX television station; they have a meteorologist (there's that word again) who has been with the station for perhaps fifty years, who does his forecasts the same as the other man on channel 3. I can't help wondering if the guy on channel 3 is taking lessons from the other one on channel eight, the FOX affiliate. Hmmm.
