[mouseboy33]

Since the tornadoes that devastated MS last week, a local meteorologist in Tupelo MS has "gone viral" with people saying he was "overwhelmed" on air. I disagree with that,  I think a better description could have been used. Not sure overwhelmed is the best descriptor. I dont agree. He had been on air for hours before he prayed and hours following.  Whilst i dont agree with praying on air, i dont think someone should be called "overwhelmed " when he carried hours of live rolling coverage, unscripted often directing the operators in the gallery and other producers live on air what camera and data sources to take and put on air. Those outside North America often fail to see the value of local tv weather operations and, why they are so specific, why tv stations make huge investments in weather, and why they devote hours of time to weather coverage in a tornado outbreak, sometime even hours thru the night. They get dismissed as silly and gimmicky. They arent perfect but they offer a live saving service for such a massive country with turbulent weather patterns. Running a crawl or a full screen graphic is simply not enough. I remember someone in a forum suggested why not have them stand in front of a plain wall an just read out the warning. Incredible.

I watched the coverage on ROKU and it was hard to watch, because you know peoples live are being destroyed and unfortunately they could be losing their life at that very moment if they fail to heed the warnings and typically its the local meteorologist who is the only person on air at the time telling the viewer whats happening and where to go and when. How to save their lives.  And in that moment when an entire town is LITERALLY being obliterated IN REAL TIME, taking lives and livelihoods 1000s of feet into the sky, they cant just stop to talk to local officials, take a mental health break, or sometimes to stop and eat or lay down or in some occasions to actually stop and talk about the damage, because they tornado may still be on the ground doing damage. Because there may be 3 or 5 more other tornadoes on the ground doing the same thing at the same time, they just have to keep going.

www.independent.co.uk 


Just imagine for a second this thing spinning at 200mph towards your house in the middle of the night, flinging cars and trucks and other debris from your neighbours house as fast as 60mph. Nothing will be able to withstand that.
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