The Springfield TV stations have done a good job of severe weather coverage generally. However they still curtail their coverage quite a bit after the storms pass Springfield. A brief "The severe weather has moved to the east of us so we're returning you to regular programming" isn't reasurring as you watch a neighbor's roof blow past.
If it were a perfect world the stations would agree on color coding watches and warnings. If your county is red it's a tornado warning on 3, a watch on 33, and who knows on channel 10/27. Which brings up the weather bug on 10/27. Earth Tones? Is the brown a little darker or a little lighter so I know if it's a watch or warning? Hey let's go to the storm shelter and squint at a pocket TV to see if we can tell the difference. My sympathies to anyone trying to use a black and white battery operated TV on those channels.
The coverage of the tornado outbreak in January was phenomenal. The local stations deserve a lot of credit for the time they spent on that outbreak. The only oddity was that somewhere in KY3's system a clock was still on Daylight Savings Time. Sadly no one seemed to notice. Every time they used the storm track feature to show towns at risk the target time was an hour off, it would indicate 2 a.m. instead of 1 a.m. etc.
It seems to me that many radio stations simply aren't trying to provide severe weather coverage and yet wonder why listeners migrate elsewhere. Last week I tuned to a couple of area stations during some severe weather. One station, obviously automated, had the same weather forecast several times without even a mention of current conditions let alone any warning information. Another station, between songs: "The weather service has issued a Thunderstorm, uh, warning for part of our listening area, uh, I think that's important. Now back to music."
It seems strange to me that we've had a reversal of roles in the past few years. Not that long ago if you wanted weather coverage you tuned to radio and got the information you needed. At the time it took Springfield TV stations up to 20 minutes to scroll a warning after it had been issued. Now most radio stations ignore severe weather coverage and the first choice of many is now TV coverage.
