20 Lessons I've Learned in TV Weather: # 9 - SO MANY CHANGES

Technological advancements have completely changed the way I’ve done my job from 1995 to today. In the early days, computers were very basic, very loud, and very slow. Information arrived only a few times per day. Forecast maps printed on giant, noisy DIFAX machines one painfully slow line at a time. I entered my temperatures manually onto a graphic with a sort of early paint program. By the time the numbers were shown on TV, they were at least a half-hour old, if not a whole hour or longer. Of course, the actual temperatures were recorded by a person, not a computer, and written on a piece of paper after checking a thermometer. That person would then call the numbers in to the local National Weather Service office which then sent the numbers out to the TV stations. Satellite images had to be rendered for several minutes and were often 15 to 30 minutes old by the time they made it to TV. NEXRAD was this brand new network of radars being installed around the country. Very few TV stations owned their own live radar.

The internet wasn’t widely used and no one had even heard of Google. You couldn’t search for anything online. If I needed to look up a meteorological term, I had to pull out my college books and hope it was in there.

When I started in South Bend in 1995, the morning show was one hour long. When I arrived at WESH in 2002, my morning show was 2 hours long. Now as I leave in 2020, we do news from 4:30 AM to 10:00 AM and then an hour at noon. That’s 6.5 hours of “morning” news.

Smartphones and apps have made everyone an armchair “weather expert” and have changed the information I give on TV. Current temperatures and a rain chance percentage aren’t as important from me when you can get them with a touch of a button. The WHEN and WHERE have become more important than the WHAT or WHY.

Computer forecast models have come a long way, too. When I started there were very few forecast models run or used. The very first tropical models (those “spaghetti” lines) weren’t run until Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Now there are numerous models using various parameters covering the entire Earth. More information leads to better, more accurate forecasts, but it also means more to traverse over, around, and through each day.

The biggest change to my job has probably been the addition of social media. I’ve had to navigate from broadcasting to/at people to interacting and responding with immediate feedback. Occasionally people are nasty and awful, but I have found that, much like in real life, many times people are AMAZING and kind and grateful. I have “met” so many awesome “friends” through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, most with whom I’d never have interacted without social media. While we’re on that topic, let me take this chance to say THANK YOU to all of you who have befriended me on social media. Thank you for following me and offering positive feedback. Thank you for sharing my posts and for continuing to stay in touch even after I leave your TV screen next week.

“Change is the only constant in life. One's ability to adapt to those changes will determine your success in life.” - Benjamin Franklin