Sunday, September 23, 2007

An Idea in Early Stages


It is not a new idea, but it is something I've wanted to establish at KWCH for a few years now. It is a network of viewers that will collect rainfall or snowfall from communities across Kansas and send us that information once a day (when we have weather of course). We have a HUGE viewing area and we are reminded of it every spring and summer when we track severe storms through the area. This map shows the counties in our viewing area (counties in green) and keep in mind, for KWCH, we extend our coverage area into northeast Colorado. Right now, we get precipitation information from a network of National Weather Service observers, but that data only comes in once per day (at 7 a.m.) I've always thought it would be great to get a group of dedicated weather watchers that would call in rainfall reports and snowfall amounts at 7 p.m. This would give us access to updated rainfall numbers for our 9 and 10 p.m. newscasts. When I worked at the TV station in Lawrence, we had a "Skyhawk" network with about 15-20 people scattered across town that would call in when they had rain or snow to report. It was a big success and people enjoyed seeing rainfall amounts from their neighborhood on the local news (at least, that's what they told me). Anyone could participate, but we would be counting on you to call or email when you have numbers to report. It would be ideal to have an even spread of weather watchers across Wichita, Hutch, and some of the bigger cities in Kansas, but in a perfect world, it would be great to have someone in each of the smaller communities too. What do you think? Would you participate?
This is an idea in early stages, but I am just wondering how many people would even be interested in participating. Let me know. Have a great week.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Bud,

Sounds like a great idea and I'd gladly participate, depending on the day/time, I could report from work or home, which would be two different parts of the Wichita area(NW and just SE of downtown).

Regarding that sunset picture I emailed you last week, I totally didn't expect you to post it, I was cool with it, but definately unexpected.

Well man don't work so much and keep in touch. Have a great week. Keep bloggin' bud.

shelly said...

Hi Ross,
I was just reading your blog. I was always wondering why we only got rainfall reports once a day. This sounds like a great and fun idea. We live on the south end of Salina, and could be a reporting place for our area. We think it would be fun to participate.

Hoping to get some much needed rain on our lawn tonight. Hope you do too.

Have a great week...

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a goo idea. You should be able to find people to do it for you with very little problems I would think, the thing is that you would have to find the ones that would be dedicated to keeping the job up. Would also be nice if you were able to educate them on the general knowledge that is needed. Most likely I would be interested,let us know when to sign up.

Anonymous said...

Great idea and I'd love to participate!

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