I think we need a thread dedicated to how much of a jackass Dr. Neil Frank is. He kept focusing on that small slight wobble due west and talked like he still thought it would go right into galveston bay without even talking about the high pressure breaking up above it that would allow it to keep going north.
Watch Shepard Smith bust his ass in the wind. http://homepage.mac.com/mkoldys/iblog/C168863457/E20050923224240/
I turned to 2 for Dominique, then to 11 for Foronda, then to 13 for Ilona Carson and Jessica Willey, repeat process and put the others in PIP. Also that FOX 26 Morning pornchick looking anchor...
The whole lot of them were drama whores. Seriously. The way the local AND national news covers stuff needs to be seriously looked at. They should be arrested for inciting a riot.
You exaggerate only slightly. KTRH was worse than any of the TV coverage by far. I hate to admit it, but years ago they were the only radio station I ever listened to. In short order after they took over, Clear Channel destroyed and soiled what used to be a great station. Very sad.
Im not sure what you guys are talking about with Neil Frank. I only started watching the news Friday afternoon. But I never heard him indicate that Rita might turn back near Galveston. That said, I don't watch a lot of tv coverage. I stick manily to weatherunderground.com "Just the facts, ma'me"
several times the hurricane would wobble to the west, and even though the high pressure was over us, he would focus on like two radar shots going back and forth ...meanwhile the other stations were calling for it to hit LA. Dr. Frank was brought in after Alicia - since he was a "doctor" - we have not had a hurricane hit Houston since... thanks 11 for the insurance!
In Lubbock, for Friday night into Saturday morning, the local CBS & FOX stations were simulcasting KHOU. Then for most of Saturday on the infomercial channel on COX Cable, KHOU was aired as well. One thing no one has mentioned is radio. Many of the Houston and Beaumont stations were/ are doing wall-to-wall local coverage, including AM 740 KTRH in Houston (which at the time I am typing this, they are still with local coverage 24 hours a day) and 560 KLVI in Beaumont. In fact, on the radio station I run in Lubbock (790 KFYO), I simulcasted KTRH during late Friday, Saturday overnight hours as the hurricane hit. The fact that Smokey mentiones that his cable system in Mobile, AL simulcasted KHOU-TV shows how big of an event this hurricane was.
Yeah...Alecia was 22 years ago... He actually joined them in 1987, so not really right after Alecia hit. http://www.khou.com/insidekhou/newsteam/dfrank.html
Or making fun of r****ded people. What's really funny is that I remember Lord and Vanderdork talking about how horrible this storm was and urging people to get out if they could and to take this storm seriously.
Frank Billingsly was by far the best weatherman, good information without any hype. If you didn't speak English but listened to KTRH 740 radio to just get a feel for what was going on you would have thought an asteroid was about to crush the city. I'm pretty sure they are a lot to blame for the traffic jam of the century. Why didn't anyone tell these people to wait until nightfall to drive out. There was plenty of time and even if you got stuck for hours you wouldn't cook in your car. Also the reverse lanes were open and organized by then. I drove to Austin in 4 hours Friday at 4 AM. I never even got mist on windshield.
Oh yeah...Lisa Foronda...I forgot how hot she is...In dallas, I just watched TXCN and it was KHOU, so I thought they did a great job...NF gets old, but hey, he was informative...
Local forecasters say they're generally pleased with coverage By MIKE MCDANIEL Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Who in his right mind wouldn't steer clear of a "cone of uncertainty"? Meteorologists are tethered to the phrase that describes the unpredictable degree of a hurricane's path. It can be the margin between right or wrong. Or partially right and kind of wrong. In short, it's no exact science. We surveyed the chief meteorologists of each of the four news stations — Channel 2's Frank Billingsley, Channel 11's Neil Frank, Channel 13's Tim Heller and Channel 26's Cecilia Sinclair — providing continuous Rita coverage last weekend for TV viewers and radio listeners in Houston, as well as outlying areas and eastward into the Golden Triangle. Each forecaster was careful not to deviate from information provided by the National Hurricane Center in Miami. But there were times when coverage was augmented. Billingsley made note of how Rita was riding the eastern edge of the "cone of uncertainty." This gave him leave to say the storm "looks like" it's going east of Houston. "The storm hit where the Hurricane Center said it would," he said. "Sabine Pass was in the cone and that's where it hit. In that way, I would say I'm in line with them but interpreting from my own perspective what it meant to our viewers." Frank drew circles on radar maps showing the eye in a stationary place. When radar was put in motion, the storm's path became more clear. But paths are made to be broken, and if Frank has learned anything, hurricanes are unpredictable. "(Hurricane) Carla was the first good storm we had with radar," he recalled. "We had the impression that all we had to do is track that eye and we could pinpoint where it would cross. What we found is that the eye wobbles. Carla made a complete, 30-mile loop. ... I've been so aware of that, I stay reserved about saying exactly when and where a storm is going." This is why, 24 and 48 hours earlier, even the weather gurus could not say for certain where the storm, originally projected to land southwest of Houston, would end up. "You're trying to forecast something that's moving over and within an environment," Heller said. "There are so many elements involved." "If you look five days out at the 'cone of uncertainty,' it did its job," Sinclair said. "We were in that cone. But everyone focuses on the center line, and they want to know exactly where it's going to cross. Of course they want to know! I want to know! (The Rita projection) was off by 70 miles. That's not much." Sinclair believes the media and the community properly reacted to Rita, and she believes Hurricane Katrina contributed. "I was shook up by what I saw Katrina do, and I know what storms can do," she said. "I'm worried that next time people are not going to evacuate because it was such an ordeal, and next time there could be tremendous loss of life because of that." Says Billingsley: "Katrina made us aware of hurricanes and their potential just like 9/11 made us aware of terrorists and their potential." Frank believes New Orleans was "a problem that didn't have a solution; when Katrina hit, we had no solution." Likewise, "Houston is a problem that doesn't have a solution if 2 million people evacuate at the same time. The evacuation plans called for the people in the storm surge to be evacuated. It takes 25 hours to get those people out — if the rest of us don't get on the roads." As we know, many of us did. Each meteorologist believes he and his station handled Rita correctly. "We did what we needed to do," Sinclair said. "Not one person complained of being tired. It was exhilarating." "We started covering it when we should have, stopped it when we should have, covered it as well as it should have," Billingsley said. "There are going to be lots of lessons learned in terms of preparation and evacuation, but that's true of anything. This was the Super Bowl, and I was ready to quarterback it, and I think I did." http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/headline/entertainment/3372449
