Technology At Work For Television Meteorologists

During the next few minutes, I will take you on a visual tour of the WTVT Television Weather Service at Tampa, Florida. This may seem out of place at this meeting, but our service utilizes a vast array of weather equipment and communications not found in most TV stations. I plan to show you how such unique technology assists the meteorologist in his presentations and aids the viewer in better understanding the atmosphere. The WTVT Weather Service was organized in 1956 with one meteorologist and a couple of teletype circuits. Today, it employs five full-time meteorologists plus an electronic technician. Its office is open from 4:00 a.m. to midnight seven days a week and (3) is responsible for about 55 minutes of weather programming broadcast to Central Florida. (4) The programming includes three daily 10-minute programs which permit detailed analysis of national weather. (5) A great deal of automatic electronic sensing equipment serves as an input to the programs. (6) As an operational private weather service, a good deal of specialized forecasting is done outside of the television programs. (7) This forecasting is done under the name of the Gulf Coast Weather Service and serves various clients throughout the southern United States. Such activities to be successful require (8) a high degree of monitoring and a quick response time, and such attributes are also desirable in weathercasting (9). Therefore, the two services are natural counterparts and utilize the same facilities. Let\u27s look at some of those facilities located in the Weather Central Office and show how these have been customized to provide maximum benefits. These are the main racks conveniently displaying many of the recorders