Could it be that O-Town viewers are about to fall behind in Doppler technology? Holy Vipir, say it ain't so!

VARTV.com reports that Belo Broadcasting's WVEC-ABC 13 in Hampton Roads-Newport News-Norfolk, Va -- in market No. 42, for crying out loud! -- is about to debut its "high-definition" radar soon, possibly in time for the Super Bowl. VARTV says, "The high definition is referring to the WeatherLab's PC video card being able to output 1280 lines of resolution (downrezzed to 525 lines for analog/NTSC). The new real-time NEXRAD is 8-bit, with 256 levels of intensity. Their current radar is 4-bit with 16 levels of intensity (light green, medium green, dark green, yellow, etc); the same as the NEXRAD images on the National Weather Service website."

KSN in Wichita, Kan., has high definition radar -- and disses its competitors for having inferior equipment. I'm sure weather is as important there as it is here. Don't we deserve high definition Doppler?

And speaking of weather ...

• Not sure if you noticed, but WFTV tweaked its weather graphics late last week. It's most noticeable on the daily and 5-day forecasts. Overall, thumbs-up -- very clean looking, and it displays information very well.
• A couple of former O-Town weather guys are getting new gigs. Brad Nitz, formerly of WESH and most recently at WJXT in Jacksonville and MSNBC, is reportedly heading to Atlanta's WSB. And another former WESH guy, Jim Clarke, who was the chief met at the NBC affiliate in Fort Meyers, is now freelancing for WINK, the CBS affiliate in southwest Florida.