THE BIG STORM finally hit the Bay Area tonight, (Wednesday)--it included
heavy rain, windy conditions, lots of downed power lines and flood warnings pretty much throughout the region.
Bay Area TV and radio covered the latest atmospheric river well, under the circumstances. Even huge and massive AWD news vans have rough times navigating treacherous freeways, roads and areas hard hit.
Some highlights and a notable dud...
KRON did an extensive one-on-one interview with a
CHP sargent opening its
5 PM newscast --the interview involving anchors
Vicki Liviakis and
Grant Lodes was concise and cogent with the officer providing basic safety info and advising motorists how to operate in dicey conditions. It was good, solid TV news and it didn't need to be visual, like a hardware store in San Anselmo with the usual same old deal.
Katie Nielsen on KPIX reported live from San Leandro n near a semi-flooded creek and talkedo a family living near an impendidng water over-flow; a flood. It was short, visual itself and effective. Good for her and PIX.
KGO (
ABC7) carried a live report from the mayor's presser at
City Hall where a
DPW official said the weather was making for frantic conditions in and around the city; the woman head said too many residents were calling
911 and that the system was overloaded. Both
Dan Ashley and
Ama Daetz stuck with storm-related news. As they should have.
KTVU and NBC Bay Area by and large had comprehensive coverage with live shots from the usual suspect locations--Marin, Sonoma and SF.
KCBS Radio did a decent PM drive account of what was taking place on a wet/windy night--complete with live and up-t0-date traffic reports but inexplicably darted off to totally useless sports updates--why? How so thoroughly ridiculous and unnecessary.
IMO KRON did the best job today with the most live shots than the other stations which had canned reports. So far it seems Oakland avoided the brunt of the storm which also seemed to live faster than expected. Winds in the Oaklahd hills have surged at times but are usually followed by long periods of calm.
ReplyDeleteKron is a like a short kid trying to dunk. Lotta jumping but not much scoring. Especially the reporters. Meh.
ReplyDeleteThey just dunked in the ratings. Check em. Dunk City.
DeletePretty even keel on the storm coverage from all the local networks. It was actually better than last week when the damage seemed worse. But it was a holiday weekend so there's that.
ReplyDeleteAside from the downed trees which no one really has control over...it's amazing what cleaning a few storm drains ahead of time can do. Especially in the City. The Mission being one example. People are such litterbugs. Just drive around S.F. on a normal day and witness all the trash that even the street sweepers can't gather fast enough before a new pile emerges. That stuff has to go somewhere. Right down the soon to be clogged again storm drain.
But overall local media did a decent job. I know these things are unpredictable and the public must be informed...But a little less overkill on the storm pre-hype would be nice in the future. (Looking at you ABC 7.) A picture is worth a thousand words. Personally, I prefer looking at actual storm damage versus live press conferences with mayors and repetitive weather maps every five minutes. So good on Ama and Dan in that regard.
And yes...not calling 911 unless it is life or death in conditions like these is always cogent advice that can't be stressed enough. 311 is your friend. Heeding mandatory evacuation orders if told to do so is another good one. Ounce of prevention. (This cliche works for storm drains too!)
I'm a 5'9" Filipino-American. Back in the day/when I played HS ball, I could dunk one-handed. Sadly, the only dunkin' I do these days is when I pick up a dozen donuts for my wife & kids (but I can still "palm" a basketball)
ReplyDeleteIt was nice to see KGO pull the whole weather team together minus Sandyha, i’m guessing she still sick because her voice did not sound too good the other night. Drew especially pulled overtime and Frances the lower bottom of the totem pole providing evening traffic updates.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the events where Paul Heggen & Darren Peck are live on coverage. I was watching the streaming part before the 11PM news and even Mary Lee has come in place of Darren to work with Paul because Darren is working every morning as Jessica is on vacation in Europe.
ReplyDeleteNice to see Mary Lee, wish she filled in for Paul on Monday afternoon or evening instead of Hackney (who is good but doesn’t get into this much detail like Peck, Heggen, Burch or Lee and is a little boring). I miss her on the weathercasts.
I think Mary & Paul work well together, both explain a lot and their flow is just right while getting to the point of the forecast. Darren is good too but much slower in his flow as if he was teaching a class.
KCBS didn't need to go to wall-to-wall special coverage of the storm.
ReplyDeleteFor much of the Bay Area, yesterday brought a heavy but not apocalyptic storm. There was significant overreaction (e.g., recommendation of cancellation of school today) by officials who were caught badly by surprise with the NYE storm. There was no meaningful flooding yesterday, and only isolated damage.
Why does Roberta Gonzales have to wear her huge fake eyelashes when reporting out in the field in the rain? It looks ridiculous.
ReplyDelete@8:13am - I can guarantee you that Drew is the bottom.
ReplyDeleteI felt KRON storm coverage was fairly good.
ReplyDeleteI thought everyone did a good job on the storm coverage. Mostly I watched 2 and 4. I think 2 was better.
ReplyDelete