Direct Hit?/Cutting In.
June 19th, 2009 at 10:57 am by Jeremy Wheeler under Weather
This photo was taken by Barry Price who was in Virginia Beach last night near the Sheraton on 35th street. It is one of the most dramatic lightning photos that I have ever seen. I tried calling the Sheraton, but I can’t get through. It’s possible that their phones are down. We are checking further. Hopefully, everone in the building was ok. Lightning was very common last night.
This one was taken by Walter Osborne from the Hilton. A lot of people leave the shutter open to get these types of lightning photos. It creates a great effect with really bright light. Aside from the lightning we also had reports of trees down in parts of Surry and Isle of Wight counties. We had 1.5″ hail reported by law enforcement 2 miles east of Lummis in Suffolk near highway 58. And this:
This was sent in by Shannon Glaser near the Fort Story area. Last night we had numerous reports of funnel clouds and water spouts near northern Virginia Beach and offshore of Hampton. Tornado warnings were issued. Now look folks. We’ve had a lot of people call in and email about cutting into programming. We understand your frustration. And I’ll tell you that it’s worse in other parts of the country. I once had a weatherman interupt an episode of Friends for a “Strong Storm”. It was not severe. I almost called him, but I thought again. I knew it would be unprofessional. Here’s why we do what we do: We cut in when we think that lives are in danger or when a large area of property is in danger. Tornado warnings always need to be heeded. Now there were reports of water spouts and funnel clouds last night. So you know that there was rotation. We did have a viewer say that 2 tables were overturned from the waterspout coming ashore near Harbour Gate Condos in Virginia Beach after the fact. The warnings affected north and central Virginia Beach. If we had a death or a lot of damage, then would people still have complained? We repeat ourselves because we have new viewers tuning in all the time. We have to assume that new people need the information as much as people who have been watching. The crawl is a great way to inform, but when you have low level rotation in a populated area, then you have to stay on top of the rapidly changing situation. Will people read a crawl saying that we have a possible tornado on 35th street, now it’s possibly on 36th street, now 37th??? You have to have patience. Because next time it could be your home that MAY get hit. And I guarantee that you’ll want to know the play by play when it happens. So we apologize for the inconvenience, but please understand that it is always better to be safe than sorry when dealing with severe weather. Also thanks to everyone who sent in photos and reports. We appreciate them so much.
End transmission….shshsh
Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler
Jeremy Wheeler
WAVY/Fox 43 Meteorologist
Amazing photos Jeremy. I should of been out there to catch that water spout.
Mike
I cannot understand for the life of me why someone would be bothered by being informed of a tornado warning. Is your sitcom or reality show really that much more important than knowing if you’re under threat of a tornado? Priorities, people!
Continue the good work guys!
I agree with Nikolai. Its a tornado warnign which is very serious. Why do people mind being told of a tornado warning.
Good job guys!
I think putting information on the crawl is a great idea, instead of ruining the only good night on NBC. (You have to admit that NBC on Thursday night is a good TV viewing night.) If I want to watch weather there are channels for that. If I want to watch good local news or weather I watch WAVY during their news hours. If I want to be entertained I watch chanel 10 on Thursday nights. Last Thursday was ruined because a table was overturned on Thurday night because of the weather.
Where is Wavy’s priorities. I guess we all have a choice. Next time a table gets blown over and WAVY cuts into viewing, I can change the channel.
Great photo of lightning.
Interesting, “If it was your area, you would want a play by play”—I seem to recall an incredibly strong storm that rumbled past Bowers Hill(the neighborhood–not the highway interchange) a couple of weeks ago. It came on through complete with hail, winds, lightning,etc, and not one word was said on television. I think it’s more “if it’s the resort area, we will cater”. Oh, and by the way, I will say this again—a lot of wind DOES NOT make it a tornado—take it from someone who grew up in Tornado Alley.
It’s not that people don’t want to be informed of tornadoes. It is simply the fact that WAVY, (whom I have watched my entire life here in Hampton Roads, repeated the same thing over and over and over again. I timed it. Don S Later was on the air for no less than 1 hour and 30 minutes. I understand that people tune in at different times, that is why they invented the crawl at the bottom of the screen. I am sure that updating a crawl every minute would not be as time and energy consuming as a live broadcast. Or, the other option would to be interrupting during the commercials, which in fairness WAVY did for about the first 3 times they thought we needed to hear, what we were seeing outside. The part that bugged my family and I the most was the fact that WAVY did not do anything to spare the shows that were interrupted. How easy it would have been to broadcast the rest of the shows on tape delay?
Hire somebody that can type 80+ words a minute to control the crawl, that way people like me won’t be commenting on WAVY lack of regard for its National Affiliate who is losing the fan base as it is.
Since we are still getting comments, I thought I’d follow up. I think we did cut in for that Bower’s Hill storm. It’s possible you missed the cut-in with the information. That’s a good example of why we stay on air and repeat ourselves in certain cases. I don’t think there was a tornado warning but we did have a spread of Severe Thunderstorm warnings. By the way, I think WAVY did put out a statement that they were going to re-air the “Get Me Outa Here” episode in the early morning a day or two later.
Jeremy Wheeler
Jeremy,
You and the whole WAVY/FOX 43 weather team does a fantastic job. However, something else popped in my head that could have avoided the cutting in. I have seen in the past that when there is a severe weather situation, WAVY puts a small “square screen” at the bottom-right hand corner of the broadcast, showing a continues feed of Super Doppler 10’s radar. With that square, the crawl, and cutting in on commercials, would probably have sufficed.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but WAVY did not air “Get Me Outta Here,” anytime after the cut-in.
I thought we ran a story that said we were going to re-air it, but I can’t find the proof. Here’s a link to see the show that I got off of our webiste:
http://www.nbc.com/im-a-celebrity/video/categories/season-1/1113684/
We can do a double box in some cases, but we either have to have the crew here and available or set it up ahead of time. I don’t know what the situation was in the back that night. We’ll try to explore more of those options for the future.
Jeremy,
I surely appreciate you taking the time to respond. Thank you for the link, and please do consider using some of those options in the future.
To be fair, Jeremy, you did, indeed, cut in but not for an hour and a half! You cut in long enough to tell us there was a storm over us(so that’s what the noise outside was!) and then you went away. However, when someone spotted a POSSIBLE water spout in the Chesapeake Bay, you all went nuts because of the “danger to Va Beach”. The wind was blowing any storm AWAY from the coast—how could it have hit Va Beach? Which, by the way, I would really have found a water spout actually leaving the water interesting to see—since they don’t