Detroit TV stations drop the ball yet again on severe weather info

[MWmetalhead]

I guess a severe thunderstorm warning with "tornado possible" verbiage is unimportant?

Nothing on 2, nothing on 7, and a public access quality graphic on 4.

Edit: Fox 2 finally has info on screen. Warning was issued 10 minutes earlier.

[edj]

Just saw a crawl on 4 but not continuous. Nothing on 7 or 62, but a map and crawl on 20.

[MWmetalhead]

62 has had the map up for about the past 15 minutes. Better late than never.

New warning just issued for northern Macomb and all of St. Clair.

[edj]

The crawl on 4 is the most unprofessional weather alert since the barking dog years ago.

[mmb5]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00uEdLN ... =RobMartin

[edj]

I’m forgetting the forecaster’s name, but it was an overnight storm, and he was clearly broadcasting from home (audio only, video was a map). You could hear his dog growling in the background. He was fired almost immediately after.

[Rate This]

NWS is sending a survey team to Holly to see if a Tornado did touch down.

[Rate This]

NWS has confirmed an EF-0 tornado touched down in Holly last night.

[proxima3]

The NWS' X account referred to it as thunderless storms coming through the area. Four minutes later they posted a severe thunderstorm warning.

[MWmetalhead]

7's severe weather warning icon glitch, which I first mentioned here last June, evidently was never fixed. Scripps happens.

To their credit, I did see a couple live cut ins from their weekend evening meteorologist during the 7PM hour, and near 7:30, a crawl that listed the warned counties was added to the bottom of the screen. (Bear in mind the first warning was issued by NWS at 7:03 PM).

I saw no cut ins on any of the other local stations. Loco 4 ran the NWS warning statement verbatim as a crawl multiple times, but the sharpness of the text was miserable. Looked like public access TV from the 1980s.

Channel 4 was the only station to make mention of the tornadic possibility.

[Rate This]

7's severe weather warning icon glitch, which I first mentioned here last June, evidently was never fixed. Scripps happens.

To their credit, I did see a couple live cut ins from their weekend evening meteorologist during the 7PM hour, and near 7:30, a crawl that listed the warned counties was added to the bottom of the screen. (Bear in mind the first warning was issued by NWS at 7:03 PM).

I saw no cut ins on any of the other local stations. Loco 4 ran the NWS warning statement verbatim as a crawl multiple times, but the sharpness of the text was miserable. Looked like public access TV from the 1980s.

Channel 4 was the only station to make mention of the tornadic possibility.

The weather radio did not read the tornadic possibility… most likely because you don’t want to send people into a panic without direct evidence for better or worse. It’s also possible that is an internal note for the various local media outlets to be ready to cut in. Clicking on the warning on my weather app produced the tornado text.

[KeenerGold]

WNEM and WJRT were a few minutes behind the tornado warning for Gratiot County, both broke in about 10 minutes after the warning was issued. WEYI ran a scroll at the top of the screen the entire time, never broke in to the NASCAR race---because no one is home on the weekends.

[MWmetalhead]

A ten minute delay for announcing a tornado warning is unacceptable.

[Rate This]

A ten minute delay for announcing a tornado warning is unacceptable.

Yes it is. I imagine the vast majority of people got it another way anyways in real time. That said they might think to tune in after that. This is one of the downsides of legacy media dying out. The quality declines too… I’m sure there has been a brain drain and all the rest from staff cuts and programming changes to save money.

[MWmetalhead]

Well put. Just cracks me up because many of these TV stations run weather image promos touting early warning, etc. then they proceed to repeatedly get caught off guard.