| HURRICANE FRANCES, Sept. 4 Stormy Weather:
It's a tale of two Toms
  Sept.
12 -- If you want to start an
argument in Central Florida these days, you don't
need to mention politics or religion. Just say
"Tom Terry." Granted,
this is only from my observance of friends,
neighbors and co-workers, but back-to-back storms
have moved the WFTV meteorologist to near icon
status.
There
are those (me included) who appreciate Terry's
expertise and they way he tracks storms. Others
say his "doom-and-gloom" attitude turns
them off. I've seen this argument about Terry
repeated almost a dozen times this past week with
different people. For every person who says Terry
is too dramatic with his weather presentation,
another will pop up to defend him. In the middle
of Hurricane Frances, I witnessed one woman
complaining about Terry -- then complaining when
someone changed the channel off Terry's coverage.
"Yes, it's addictive," she conceded of
WFTV's storm coverage.
Basically,
there seems to be two weather camps emerging from
our Charley and Frances experiences. You have the
Tom Terry camp ... and the Tom Sorrells
camp. WKMG's meteorologist is the anti-Terry,
according to the folks I'm around. They say they
like his calmness and his reporting. They say his
Frances forecast for Orlando was more accurate
than Terry's. And Sorrells' "Talk to
Tom" segments during Frances reinforced the
perception that he's a friendly, knowledgeable
guy. (That WKMG has finally given its mets some
decent weather tools to use -- the new VIPIR
software -- certainly helps Sorrells'
credibility, too.)
Surprisingly,
storm coverage on WESH -- long thought of as the
market's weather leader -- hasn't caused much of
a buzz. One guy told me, "I watched NBC
Nightly News for 20 minutes and knew more about
the hurricane than I did from watching WESH for
the past 10 hours." His household has
switched over to Terry and WFTV for future
storms, he said. Even WOFL-Fox 35, which has the
disadvantage of being the newest news department
in town and without as many resources as the Big
3 stations, earned more discussion for its
coverage than WESH.
Glenn
Richards' and Jim Van Fleet's
reports were mentioned by a couple of people. I'm
not sure if they were watching Fox 35 all time,
but they did seem to be checking them out. What
does all this mean? That's hard to say. WFTV is
already the top-rated news in town in all but two
time periods -- noon and 11 p.m. Will Terry's
popularity help Eyewitness News overcome a weak
ABC prime time and move to the top spot at 11? Or
will the emergence of Sorrells as the "Terry
alternative" keep WKMG as No. 1? And is WESH
losing out as a player in storm coverage? We'll
all have to wait and watch.
Not
all weather centers are the same
 Sept.
12 -- We've gone through two
storms in the past three weeks, so we all have
had an up-close and personal look at the area
stations' weathercasting. Though I really am not
brand loyal to any station in town, I did end up
watching more of WFTV for both storms -- and I've
been trying to figure out why.
Yes,
there's Tom Terry, who is a
thorough professional and obviously gets excited
about the weather. But there's more. I think one
reason I kept going back to WFTV was that new
Severe Weather Center. Now, a news director once
told me no one watches the news because of the
set, but I would disagree a bit in this case.
It's not so much the look of the Channel 9
weather set, but it's configuration. You can see
the six or seven other people working right along
with Terry.
When
you see Terry, Tom Sorrells, Dave
Marsh or Glenn Richards
up in front of a chroma wall, they may be the
only ones in front of the camera, but they have
producers or others working with them behind the
scenes. WFTV's new weather center lets viewers
see the folks who are backing up Terry. He
interacts with them, and that gives viewers (or
at least me) a little more confidence that WFTV
is doing all it can to report storm coverage as
quickly and as thoroughly as possible.
No
offense to WESH or WOFL, but when you see WFTV's
huge weather center with its different work
stations, then flip the channel to see Richards
or Mike O'Lenick sitting next to
a single PC that looks no different from the one
on my desk, you can understand why some folks put
more credibility in Channel 9's coverage.
I
know WKMG is getting ready for a set refresh --
and investing in a WFTV-style weather center is
an idea they should consider.
Frances
Memories: Some stuff that stood out
 Sept.
12 -- Finally, some stuff that
stood out to me during the hours (and hours) of
Hurricane Frances coverage. ... WKMG's Bob
Frier had the best line of the whole
hurricane, when -- seemingly a bit exasperated --
he said the best word to describe the relentless,
slow-moving Frances was "obnoxious."
Amen! ...
Early
on in its Saturday coverage, Fox 35 had a
reporter -- Trei Johnson, I
think -- on the beach. She noted the wind was
uncovering turtle nests and blowing the eggs
across the beach. Very concerned, she asked the
anchors if there was anything she could do. Fox
got an expert who said to cover the nests back up
-- but then the anchors cautioned Trei and the
public not to go out and try to do that. ...
If
I'm not mistaken, I think this is the same Fox
reporter who was almost hit by a falling tree
during coverage. I heard one of them had a close
call. ... Rather than riding out this storm out
at our damaged home, I took the family to work
with me. We were staying at the downtown
Marriott, since it was close to the office. We
were awakened about 6:30 a.m. Sunday by the hotel
staff to tell us to evacuate to the main ball
room because the side of the building was
crumbling off. Turns out it wasn't that big of a
deal safety-wise, but we braved the winds and
headed the two blocks over the office after that.
...
The
Marriott seemed a popular choice for the media.
Besides Orlando Sentinel employees staying there,
there were vans for WFTV and Atlanta's WSB in the
parking lot. ... I bet I wasn't alone in worrying
that WESH's two very, very pregnant
meteorologists -- Leslie Hudson
and Amy Sweezey -- were going to
go into labor any minute during storm coverage.
Fortunately they didn't, and both did fine jobs
with their reporting. ...
I
only got to see a few minutes of Central Florida
News 13's coverage -- when I was out at a
restaurant on Monday night. I looked up and saw
former Channel 6 weathercaster Pat
Michaels on the screen. I thought maybe
they hired him to help in storm covearge, but
turned out he was there as a spokesman for a
local organization. ...
At
one point during WFTV's coverage, Tom
Terry mentioned that the power had just
gone out in his neighborhood, but that it was OK.
He had a generator, and he told all his neighbors
to head over to his house. "Help yourself to
whatever you need," he said, prompting
laughter and concern from anchors Martie
Salt and Bob Opsahl.
Realizing what he just said, Terry quickly added,
"Just leave the big-screen TV." ...
How
many times do you read about a weatherman being
compared to a rock star? That's just what the Orlando
Sentinel did with Terry -- in an
editorial, no less! -- in
praising WFTV's coverage and that of the other
stations, too. ...
And
in my neighborhood, someone has a sign up that
says "Hurricanes Suck." I'm still not
sure whether the neighbor dislikes the weather or
the University of Miami. Guess that means things
might finally be getting back to normal.
|
Aug.
29, 2004 -- When Hurricane Charley made an
unexpected trip up Interstate 4 on Aug. 13 --
Friday the 13th of all days -- the storm became
part of Central Florida lore. There had not been
a hurricane like this to hit the region in more
than 40 years. Fortunately, television news had
advanced considerably since Hurricane Donna
slammed Orlando on Sept. 11, 1960. Thanks to
their experience, their commitment to cover the
story, their competitive natures and their
technology -- not the least of which was Doppler
radar and storm-tracking software -- the area
stations helped Central Floridians prepare for
and weather the "I-4 storm."
Meteorologists at Orlando
stations alerted viewers the storm was heading
directly here around noon Friday -- hours before
the National Hurricane Center would acknowledge a
change in the storm's path. Exactly which station
first predicted the storm's new path has been a
matter of great debate. WFTV's Tom Terry was
credited originally for making the call, but WKMG
and WESH both have said they too reported a
change in the storm's path before the Hurricane
Center.
It was big news. Most
everyone had gone to bed Thursday night and to
work on Friday morning thinking the storm was
going to come ashore somewhere near Tampa and
give Orlando a glancing blow as it moved across
the peninsula. By noon, every Central Florida
station was warning that it was going to be much
worse than anticipated here. Terry was telling
viewers to get home before 2 p.m. Many stopped at
grocery stores (that ones which were still open
at that point) to get last-minute supplies. I got
a call from my wife while I was in a check-out
line telling me the storm -- which had just been
upgraded to Category 3 -- was now a Category 4
storm. Yikes!
I think WESH was the first
station to start wall-to-wall coverage, but the
others quickly followed. Even Central Florida
News 13, the Bright House cable station,
abandoned its recorded news wheel and went with
hours and hours of live coverage. WB18, which
doesn't have a news department any more, ran a
crawl with hurricane information. WOPX-Channel
56, the Pax affiliate out of Melbourne, began
simulcasting WESH's coverage. (And that was a
lesson for next time. WESH's transmitter is
located north of Orlando in Orange City. With no
cable or satellite, it's nearly impossible to get
a picture on Channel 2. But Pax's UHF signal on
Channel 56 comes in pretty clear with an old
"rabbit ear" antenna. Too bad it
switched to NBC's Olympic coverage just as the
storm was approaching.)
When a feeder band came
across the region in the early afternoon as a
prelude to Charley's arrival, things started to
quiet down. Businesses were closed, streets were
deserted. The stations used all the technology at
their disposal to cover the storm's approach.
From reporters doing live shots in the southern
part of the state to utilizing Department of
Transportation cameras along I-4, we watched as
the storm worked its way toward us.
The worst of it for the
Orlando area came around 9:30 or so. There was a
105 mph wind gust at Orlando International. Those
DOT cameras showed powerful winds whipping sheets
of rain and rocking light poles and traffic
signals. WFTV's camera atop the SunTrust bank
building in downtown Orlando was shaking like
there was a huge earthquake going on below. From
its bird's-eye view, you could see power
transformers flashing and lights going off and on
all across the downtown area.
As the storm was toppling
hundreds of trees in downtown Orlando, Terry told
viewers the station was running on generators --
but you wouldn't have known from the on-air
product. WKMG-Channel 6 wasn't as lucky. It lost
power and had generator problems. Finally, the
station got back on the air by using one of its
live trucks -- supplying power to two lights and
two microphones in the studio for the anchors and
to the tower outside to send a signal to WKMG's
transmitter. It was bare-bones broadcasting -- no
graphics, no lights and, unfortunately, no
weather radar -- but it was broadcasting. And,
even more important, with so many in Central
Florida without power, WKMG's broadcasts allowed
it to continue providing coverage on FM radio.
(WKMG's audio signal -- as is the audio of all
Channel 6's in the U.S. -- is carried on 87.7
FM.)
I mean no disrespect to the
hard-working folks at WESH, WKMG, WOFL or Central
Florida News 13, but WFTV and Tom Terry stood out
with their extraordinary coverage. At the height
of the storm, I wasn't concerned with flipping
around the dial to see who was doing the best
job. We just kept the TV on WFTV. Terry and the
team of folks staffing the station's relatively
new Severe Weather Center 9 gave a
minute-by-minute account of the storm's approach
and what to expect. They constantly updated
graphics to show the storm's exact path and
expected wind gusts. Their Doppler radar and
associated software were able to tell the story
of the storm in an easy to understand way. They
would focus in on an area and show what the winds
were. They would zoom out and show where the
rough weather was and where it was headed. They
checked rain-fall totals. And through it all,
Terry's businesslike demeanor kept everyone calm.
That included me.
While watching WFTV's
coverage and hearing Terry mention one nasty
feeder band was heading toward our area, he again
repeated that everyone should be in a safe
interior area away from windows. My weather
station was showing the winds outside were about
50 mph -- but it sounded like 150 to me. My wife,
son and I decided we're ride out the rest of the
storm in our utility room. Not too long after we
got in there (with our two dogs), some debris
came crashing through our kitchen window. Scared
the hell out of all of us. But, with a small TV
somehow also squeezed into the utility room with
us, we watched Terry's radar images and realized
the worst for us would be over in about 30
minutes. It was the longest 30 minutes I've ever
waited in my life as we kept hearing more glass
break and wind whipping into our house. But, just
as the radar indicated, things began to settle
down.
Compared with the damage
others had, we couldn't complain. We lost most of
the shingles and paper from our roof, the top of
our chimney was torn off, the backyard fence and
the big oak in the front yard were down, and we
had lots of leaks inside the house. But we were
safe and had electricity!
As storm continued it path
along I-4, it finally exited the state and went
out to the Atlantic. WFTV ended its coverage
around midnight; WESH and WOFL signed off around
12:30 a.m. WKMG, which was barely broadcasting,
made the decision to stay on the air the rest of
the night. A lot of folks have asked what good
was served by that decision, but if I were alone
in a damaged house without electricity, I think
hearing a familiar voice on the radio or on a
battery-operated TV would be pretty comforting in
such a hectic and scary situation. And, as Local
6's reporters made their way back to the station
with their video, it became apparent just how
widespread the damage was across the region. That
was something the other stations wouldn't pick up
on until their came back with their newscasts
around 5:30 a.m. And anchor Bob Frier must have
set some sort of Central Florida record -- being
on the air for nearly 18 hours with just a few
short breaks in between.
Sept.
29 -- In
every one of Florida's four (yes ... count 'em,
FOUR) hurricanes this season, there has been an
iconic image on our TVs. For Hurricane Jeanne, to
me the image was provided by Gustavo
Almodovar. 
