Boy, what I wouldn’t have given to have had an ABC3340 Weather Blog and weather watcher reports growing up. Winter weather events like this were excruciating for hours just waiting on any morsel of information. If the event happened at the right time of day, you might get great reports from Joe Rumore at WVOK. TC and John Ed gave good information. And WERC didn’t do a half bad job.
There was the telephone weather forecast line at the National Weather Service. I called it every few minutes hoping for an update.
Then came Weather Radio in November 1976. That helped a lot, especially if J.B. was on duty. His Alabama Weather Updates and looks at the Alabama weather situation were greatly anticipated in a developing weather scenario.
The first good sign that things were happening were often that crews were sanding Shades Crest Road or Columbiana Road, or some such hill. The Red Mountain Expressway would close. Or Birmingham Police were closing the interstate system. Then you knew you were home free…no school tomorrow!
In this weekend’s event, we have had continuous reports from almost every community in Central Alabama thanks to our cadre of Weather Watchers and thousands of people monitoring the blog. It gave us real ground truth to what we were seeing on the radar. Thanks to everyone for their input.
