Doug here...a couple of notes to start off...weather is not climate change. Lots of weathers stacked on top of one another (hundreds of years) IS climate change. Next, I am not writing this as a self-congratulatory tome, but as a look inside at how we bring things together. These being said...it was unusual to be awakened from a mid-afternoon nap by the EAS alert. Immediately, we sprang into action at Newsradio 600WMT.
When the Emergency Alert System tones hit the airwaves to indicate a severe weather warning, I pulled audio from our severe weather partner, CBS2 Iowa's News Now and the Weather First Forecast Team, onto the air at WMT. Randy Lee happened to be heading to the studio already, so he joined me on air and we then alternated between our coverage and that of CBS2.
Because the Tornado Warning was for Linn County, we placed the wall-to-wall severe weather coverage from Newsradio 600WMT on to our FM stations. This is something we will continue doing when a Tornado Warning is issued for Linn County. In addition, if the severe weather is affecting the other counties in our alert area (Delaware, Benton, Jones, Iowa, Johnson, Cedar and Washington Counties), we offer expanded coverage to make sure our listeners are kept up to date.
We offer these expanded and wall-to-wall coverage plans because we are the National Weather Service's designated EAS station for the area including the counties listed above. We take our responsibility to you seriously and we appreciate you listening to us for the latest in news, weather, traffic, sports and entertainment.
Meanwhile, be aware of the potential for severe winter weather heading to the area Wednesday afternoon through Thursday morning. More on that as the details sort themselves out.
-dcw-