I think (but I’m not sure) that there is really only one local weather service in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It’s called the Capital Weather Gang. It’s actually employed by the The Washington Post. However, it appears to me that all the television stations, all the radio stations, all the newspapers, etc. in the Washington, D.C. area that do any weather reports use the Capital Weather Gang (for which they pay something to The Washington Post). The stations, etc. thus have reports at the end of each news show that starts with “Hi, I’m {insert name here} with the Capital Area Weather Gang.” They then give a weather report about that day’s weather and what they can say about the future weather. These reports don’t say anything about what the Capital Area Weather Gang is.
I would like for there to be less entertainment and sports news too. So what? The job of the local television stations and local radio stations isn’t to make me happy. Their job is to make money for their owners. Apparently there are lots of people who do like entertainment and sports news.
Darn! The Fool on channel 8 doesn’t get the cut. By far the worst presenter on TV anywhere.
Everyday, he starts to read the forecast, and within about 12 seconds, starts to gag, cough and choke, then you get to hear the inevitable and Ultra-Disgusting ‘Glub Glub Glub’ as he sucks down on a water bottle. Every. Damn. Day!
The most unprofessional thing I’ve ever seen on TV.
Certainly. However, the underlying problem could go away and there would still be little need for local TV weather reporters while the other purposes you mention for local reporting will still be needed. And that reporting will diminish over time. Not simply in air time either. The lack of credibility will send even more people to disinformation outlets. Perhaps people are now discovering how the ‘left wing liberal media’ claims were all disinformation to begin with. The ‘media’ is comprised of businesses which have always leaned to the right.
I’ve no idea what the local TV guy says. I know what the local radio says. And I also know, as I’ve said over and over and over, that the weather isn’t the only issue for local reporting, even for weather-related issues, and that no airport is going to report any of the rest of it.
And it was not NOAA which told me that Penn Yan or Lodi was washed out; let alone exactly which roads were closed.
ETA: They do sometimes tell me that a thunderstorm’s headed this way and which places they expect it to hit. They’re generally right overall and very often wrong in detail; and they don’t tell me a thing about the results afterwards, except sometimes to announce several days later that something was a downburst or a tornado.
St. Louis isn’t even technically a part of Tornado Alley, but we have our share of severe weather. We’ve had tornadoes completely devastate swaths of north St. Louis County while south St. Louis County didn’t even get rain. About three weeks ago we had a winter storm that left anywhere between 1 and 6 inches of snow in places less than 20 miles apart. The National Weather Service is nowhere near that granular with their data.
That’s simply not true. The local TV stations go into depth about bad weather both ahead of time and in real time. They are far better at warning people about what is going on than your phone.
I think you’re misunderstanding the point of my post. The EAS is very good for letting me know that something is going on in my general area (and as @thorny_locust points out, often several counties away) and that I need to be weather aware. It is not as good as the live coverage the local meteorologists provide, where I can both see and hear what’s going on. I have never had a weather radio tell me as quickly and accurately as what I’m watching on my TV. And I’m certainly not advocating for relying on tweets for emergency weather info, but they’ve quite frankly been more helpful than the EAS in more than one situation.
And honestly, no I’m not getting in my fraidy hole with the cats until the tornado is pretty dang close or there’s risk of quick spin-ups. If I took cover every time a tornado was in my county or the next one over, I’d spend half of spring in the closet.
We do have an ongoing story from my local area that I have been following; it’s about a teenager with bone cancer who has entered hospice because all treatments have failed, and when word got out in the exotic-car community that he liked them, they have taken him for rides in them, and even organized a drive-by parade by his house last weekend. A benefactor (IIRC Make-a-Wish) even flew him to a national car show in Atlanta shortly after the news broke. Skydiving is on his bucket list, although he’s a minor and I’m not sure he could do that anyway.
Concur. I haven’t watched local tv news for decades. My children have never seen it. It’s a relic of the past, like printed news, that is a niche product.
Unfortunately that is something I fear too. NOAA/NWS are so extremely important and they do good work. My local NWS is also really good about disseminating weather information in a way that is understandable by the general populace. Then when the TV mets are getting worked up and predicting something catastrophic to drive up ratings, it’s so easy to check the NWS (usually on FB or X) and see if it’s being blown out of proportion or if it really is going to be a big deal.
Completely agreed. As a young person, my “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was to be a TV meteorologist. That didn’t happen, for a variety of reasons, but I’m still very much a “weather nerd,” and I visit the NWS sites regularly, as they’re the best, most authoritative site for forecasts. I also read my local office’s “forecast discussion,” which goes into great detail on what’s happening, and why.
I’m very nervous about what Trump is going to do to NOAA and the NWS, in the name of (a) shutting up a source of information about climate change, and (b) pushing weather forecasting into the private sector. I am sure that he has no f***ing clue that all of the private weather companies rely on NWS forecasts and data.
That it’s part of the nationwide effort to deny & downplay climate change coming from the Right. A centralized, automated system is easier to tweak to say the appropriate things than flesh and blood weathermen/women who might contradict the officially mandated forecast.
One of the local stations I watch here in Minnesota is on the list, and the weather people are pretty chill, so I’d be sorry to see if the whole crew gets cut. The other local station’s chief meteorologist is too smarmy for my taste, flashing a big phoney toothy smile as soon as the cameras are on him. My wife gets tired of me complaining about him saying “rainfall” or “snowfall”, which is apparently more accurate than saying rain or snow, but when he says crap like “there are three inches of snowfall on the ground” instead of “there are three inches of snow on the ground”, it bugs me.
Anyway, I trust my default weather app on my Samsung phone more than the TV guys.
Those statements mean different things. Talking about “snowfall on the ground” is how much snow has accumulated. Talking about “snow on the ground” is how much snow is actually on it. So if there’s two inches of snow on the ground, and then comes three inches of snowfall, then there’s five inches of snow on the ground.
When I was an undergraduate, one of our assignments was to watch the local evening news and keep track of how long each segment was. i.e. What do they think it’s important for you to know? They spent almost six minutes talking about the weather. There were no weather anomalies, no storms, nor anything else of particular note, but they spent nearly a whole six minute talking about it. Why? Because some people really like the weather. Most of us didn’t need nearly six minutes devoted to the weather.
I do feel bad for everyone being laid off. But for many of us, weather information is available at the touch of a button.
The snow/snowfall on the ground statement came after a warm spell of melting, with no new snow(fall) for at least a week. That’s why “snowfall on the ground” was so absurd. I think he forgot that the word “snow” even exists.
After I “cut the cord” (in other words, canceled my cable TV service) and didn’t replace it with any other sort of live TV service, my parents asked “Well how do you watch the local news then?” To which I responded “I don’t”. I, too, haven’t watched the local news in decades.
I think that may be part of how we wound up where we are.
People don’t pay any attention to what’s happening locally. Then they get blindsided by what happens nationally. But what’s happening nationally started locally.
And purely on the local level – what happens locally can screw you up massively. How do you know what the town/village/city/borough just decided can or can’t be built next door to you? How do you even know what’s in your water?
