Live on the Weather Channel

2010-09-17 12:00:56.000 – Brian Clark,  Observer and Meteorologist

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Yesterday ended up being a very busy day dealing with calls from the media. Although, as I mentioned yesterday, Wednesday’s meager snowfall was not record breaking by any means, it is still an exciting story to a lot of people.

One of the media calls came from the Weather Channel. Now, in the past year or so we discovered that, as an organization, we have the ability to talk live with TV stations using a computer program called Skype. This software allows us to not only send audio to a TV station (or other media outlet for that matter), but also video. The first live audio and video broadcast from the summit was done this past winter, when the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore visitied the mountain.

Yesterday, the Weather Channel scheduled to have me go live with them at 4:40, 5:40, and 6:40 p.m. These times were publicized on our page on Facebook and in an e-newsletter that was sent out yesterday afternoon. The feed at 4:40 went off without a hitch. We never went on at 5:40 and 6:40 however, and have been getting a lot of email inquiries as to why that is.

The reason: a severe weather outbreak in the Mid-Atlantic.

Although a news program has their show scheduled in advance, if a breaking, more important story comes up during the broadcast, that station will alter its schedule to cover that story. This is especially true for the Weather Channel since a breaking weather story can develop at a moments notice. Yesterday, several lines of severe thunderstorms moved through the New York City area, and Ohio, spawning some tornadoes and causing quite a bit of damage. Because of this, the Weather Channel (understandably so) opted to continue their coverage of that severe weather outbreak rather than talk with us for those last two time slots.

That’s just the way the cookie crumbles in the news world. Thanks to everyone that tried to tune in! Hopefully our non-appearance didn’t cause any inconvenience, and we’ll continue to keep you informed of these media appearances in the future.

Brian Clark,  Observer and Meteorologist