Just when you thought Mother Nature had enough enslaving the Midwest to her whims, and was going to settle back for a nice, lemon-topped icewater for spring, here come the thunderstorms.
And come they have. Several in the past week, three seperate systems have hit Indiana in the past 24 hours, the worst of which was the Friday/Saturday bridge, in which several area residents claimed bseball-sized hail. (It's a rural area, people exaggerate.) No tornadoes for us, though, just a big light show and high winds and water. Lots of water.
Surprisingly, no power was lost here at the MA Ranch.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am a news and weather junkie, and a thunderstorm is about the biggest news event to happen in this area of the world. It's my natural inclination, then, to flip on the radio and monitor who's doing what.
There are no real AM stations to speak of here, so everything is concentrated on the FM dial, and many of the small stations here get their programming from satellite feeds. The two FM stations in Washington, a 50,000 watt country station, and a smaller "easy listening" station, were on the air with severe weather coverage at 11 P.M. at night. Most stations at that hour, it seemed, were willing to pass on it and let people fend for themselves. The country station didn't have that option, since it's the station responsible for sending the EAS signal over the air so other stations in the area can pick it up. Outside of that, however, the lone on-air talent they sent in to do the work seemed more or less content to just read the wire bulletins and call it enough.
It was the smaller station, though, that took a risk and carried the day. With only one person in the studio, a relative storm-coverage veteran as many who work in the radio business in this area are, they opened up their phone lines to the listening public to phone in reports and, with likely with no call screener, put them on-the-air. (On one occasion, though, it did seem as if he had a screener, but I couldn't say that with certainty.) This type of thing is really hedging your bets in radioland, since you never know when you're going to get a caller who says something to the effect of, "My power's out and it's making my beer warm!" (and I have heard that one before.)
It worked out in clover for the reporter, though, as the field reports from ordinary citizens and other staffers at the radio station were coherent and helpful. Balanced with timely official updates and monitoring other media outlets and radar pictures, the calls made for one of the finest nights of weather reporting you're going to find in a rural area, and all with one person calling the shots.
Pretty impressive, I'd say.
Wow, I rambled a lot there. Can you tell I once had aspirations for working in radio?
12:17:27 AM 
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