How spoiled are you?

[mobilebay]

As I was posting on a different subject this one come to mind. Today we can get any information on the Tropics with the click of a mouse. I remember years ago before the Internet and before I had TWC, I would have to get my information one of two ways. Through NOAA weather radio, or through local news. Remember, all you would get on the local news is one bad Satellite Image and some coordinates. When they flashed the Satellite image you better look fast because it was only up there a second or two. Now I get frustrated when we have the Satellite Eclipse for a couple of hours. My how times has changed. The technology over the years has really spoiled me.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Me to I used to do the same thing.

[Air Force Met]

As I was posting on a different subject this one come to mind. Today we can get any information on the Tropics with the click of a mouse. I remember years ago before the Internet and before I had TWC, I would have to get my information one of two ways. Through NOAA weather radio, or through local news. Remember, all you would get on the local news is one bad Satellite Image and some coordinates. When they flashed the Satellite image you better look fast because it was only up there a second or two. Now I get frustrated when we have the Satellite Eclipse for a couple of hours. My how times has changed. The technology over the years has really spoiled me.

When I was a kid and got the weather bug, I had to get my weather one of two ways too. I taped AM Weather on PBS for the morning fix...and I used my weather radio. Since I lived far away from the NWS station, I had to climb a tree to get the very staticy signal....and only then when I held the antenna a certain way. It was a sight (albeit sad) to behold.

[mobilebay]

As I was posting on a different subject this one come to mind. Today we can get any information on the Tropics with the click of a mouse. I remember years ago before the Internet and before I had TWC, I would have to get my information one of two ways. Through NOAA weather radio, or through local news. Remember, all you would get on the local news is one bad Satellite Image and some coordinates. When they flashed the Satellite image you better look fast because it was only up there a second or two. Now I get frustrated when we have the Satellite Eclipse for a couple of hours. My how times has changed. The technology over the years has really spoiled me.

When I was a kid and got the weather bug, I had to get my weather one of two ways too. I taped AM Weather on PBS for the morning fix...and I used my weather radio. Since I lived far away from the NWS station, I had to climb a tree to get the very staticy signal....and only then when I held the antenna a certain way. It was a sight (albeit sad) to behold.

LOL!!! I used to walk around the house turning my Weather Radio until I could get a signal, then when it got to the advisory it would break up every time. Thats funny! One more thing. Why could you always get the best reception in the one room you could not go in. My daddy used to work nights and of course that was the room with the best reception. I knew not to go in there and wake him up. People used to get so mad at me. I remember my mother saying "Why or you playing that thing?" they are saying the same thing over and over again. I would try to explain that the new Advisory should be out any minute, but she didn't understand.

[Cookiely]

The only way I found to get a decent signal on my weather radio was to stand on a chair and point the antenna at a light bulb. Everyone thought I had lost a few brain cells.

[cyclonaut]

I kind of miss those days(For me it was the 80's)..Back then you did'nt really know where things were going so far in advance..there was much more anticipation & suspense involved compared to now..Today technology sometimes takes the fun out of it & not to mention the 2 million online mets that already know whats going to happen before the season even starts..Hurricane Charley show us that no forecast is full proof & sometimes a storm can still take a unexpected turn..Furthermore,I sometimes love it when the so called experts are wrong..I like to see people with a god complex come crashing back to Earth & back into mortality.

[Trader Ron]

I go back a few more "Decades" than most on Storm 2 K. Back in the 50's, we got quite a bit of information from Ship reports. I still remember listening intently, (when i wasn't listening to Elvis) on my transistor radio. Yes I had a Television.

[otowntiger]

I think you are right. The technology has sort of taken the fun out of it. I used to hang on every precious little word that the local met would say about a system way out there and I'd cling to my little portable weather radio for those new advisories. I'd listen to the same forecast time and time again hoping for new information that wouldn't come for 3 sometimes 6 hours. I knew my family thought I was nuts. I'd even wake up in the middle of the night to get the latest advisories if something was brewing. Even then it was only sparse information. The anticipation and imagination had to fill the time between those advisories. Now with the info overload, we are terribly spoiled and easily bored. I suppose it is a combination of too much information access and a function of growing up. It just doesn't seem as much fun anymore. As a kid I would try to imagine what it would be like to experience a major stom in our area. Now, grown up and fretting about roof damage on my house, and other adult worries, I'm not eager to have one in my neck of the woods anytime soon. Plus, our hurricane experience last year will tide me over for quite a few years. Also, somehow it was more fun when not everyone paid so much attention. Its like now when there is an organized blob, anywhere, it is the top news.

[vbhoutex]

I don't think the technology has taken the fun out of it. I think it has added to the challenge of forecasting while making them more accurate or at least allowing some of us amatuers to be more accurate(no commnets from the peanut gallery).

I have fond memories of following TD's, TS's and Hurricanes from the 1950's on. One thing I learned from dad and the lack of technology back then is to watch the skies and the animals. Many times, especially before the advent of the technology we have now I have been correct in my assessment that something was "brewing" in the GOM and where it was located. Even looking at what sat maps were available through the media I have followed storms long before the technology we have now. My dad picked up on Camille long before she became a TD with the various sources he used and we followed her all the way to MS and beyond. Oh how I wish he were around to experience what I have now. He was just starting to get into weather on the internet when he passed in 1999. He would have given any pro met a run for their money I bet. In fact he even went to FSU to try to go through their Met program, but couldn't get pass the math(1960's).

[TreasureIslandFLGal]

I remember way back when I was a little kid, being able to watch the newly formed "Weather Channel" by pressing a button on my cable box. That was the coolest station! It had meteorologists that would tell you what was happeneing now, show all kinds of maps and satellite pictures, but even better yet, they would show the weather pattterns and what they thought was happening with them and what they thought would happen with them in the future and why... they would actually "forecast" based on their educated observations! It was soooo cool to watch that station back then. ... until the commercials became overwhelming, the weather was replaced by "tv shows", they stopped explaining the "how and why's" and never forecasted again based on their own reasoning. Now they just spit out verbatum what the NWS puts out.
Why can't they go back to giving the NWS "official" info but also put in their own thoughts and reasoning? -even if it doesn't necessarily agree with NWS?

[Brent]

I used to watch TWC pretty much all day back then... Now the channel sucks because you can get much more timely info on the internet. I only resort to them now for primary information if the internet is down.

[Scorpion]

Ive always been spoiled because I was never alive back in the day when there was no TWC or internet. I remember I used to watch TWC for all weather info but switched to the internet when I figured I could get better info. I still watch them from time to time if the computer is being used.

[cyclonaut]

Yeah my dad being from Cuba has many great stories to tell about his experiences with hurricanes that hit there back when he was a kid..He was part of the reason that I got into hurricanes..Up until a few years ago, he still loved to track them with me & even slightly looked forward to feeling the effects from a particular storm..Now he is in his 70's & does'nt want to hear anything about a approaching storm & definately does'nt want to hear me joke about it like we use to do before.

TreasureIsleFLGal I remember when the Weather Channel began too,I remember that ugly control where you flicked a switch to change channels..John Hope was the man back then & Neil Frank was still @ NHC..It was great but hurricanes were few & far between @ least for me but it was still fun to track..I also remember that back then one could call NHC or NWS & ask them for info on a storm..I did a few times anyway..I also remember back then that my Junior High School was a short distance from my house & when there was a storm near by I would run home to watch the Tropical Update..My friends thought I was crazy.

Those were the days..

[dhweather]

I'll never forget methodically walking around with my NOAA weather radio,
waiting for the TWO to come out. Listening to the same old rerun
after rerun, just to see what was going on. Then when we had a system in the Gulf, I'd never cut it off.

[BayouVenteux]

Yep, back in the pre-cable, pre-internet day it was always a challenge to grab a pencil and feverishly jot down the coordinates, the highest sustained wind, the minimum central pressure, the direction AND the forward speed that the local radio or TV announcer would dole out as each new advisory was issued. If you missed it or didn't get it all, sometimes it could possibly be ANOTHER three, possibly six hours 'til you would. Unless the storm was closing in on your locale that was all you got, and you simply had no other way to mark the ol' Delchamps or Schwegmann's (now-defunct grocery store chains) complimentary tracking chart.

Looking back, the experience was somewhat akin to Ralphie in A Christmas Story scribbling down Little Orphan Annie's secret code.

[SouthernWx]

I'm old enough to remember back when there wasn't even NOAA weather radio...back when every tv station in Atlanta went off the air around midnight....back when the NWS in Atlanta (then located near Hartsfield Int'l airport) didn't answer their telephone after 5 p.m. or before 9 a.m., and it was honestly a very frustrating time.

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven in May 1980 when we finally got cable tv (which I'd experienced a taste of while vacationing in Florida the previous summer). While "The Weather Channel" was still almost two years away, at least there was a cable station with a "live" weather station only 1/2 mile from my home (showing current temp, humidity, pressure, rainfall, wind speed/ direction, etc) AND another cable station showing a local tv weather radar 24 hours a day (plus occasional satellite images).

I've also tried to hear NOAA wx radio in every way concievable....especially the station atop Mt Cheaha, AL (broadcast from WSFO Birmingham); everything from placing a Radio Shack antenna in my attic to standing on a chair near the SW corner of my home (no wonder dad and grandma thought I was nuts!

Many times over the years I've plotted hurricane locations and forecast positions via USCG broadcasts on shortwave radio (which I did during Hugo when our cable went out....only hours before landfall on the Carolina coast (didn't seen John Hope or any TWC graphics for that monster's impact

I experienced my first taste of the internet in 1995 while visiting sis in Mississippi; she and her husband had AOL on their home computer (first tornado warnings I ever saw "live" on the internet). Looking back....I don't see how I survived those years between 1996 and 2000 without internet service (I never bought a computer while living in Mississippi; used TWC and NOAA wx radio for tracking storms at my apartment...drove to sis's occasionally to check hurricane forecast data on her computer...remember, this was that wild, crazy 1995 hurricane season).
I moved back to Atlanta early in 96', still without internet service (wasn't very computer savvy, had never heard of Webtv)....finally realizing in 1999 that compared to the wx data online, TWC just didn't cut it (why I FINALLY canceled my cable service and went online w/ Webtv five years ago this month).

Am I spoiled today...with all the incredible weather data available at my fingertips, forums to discuss the current storm, and the ability to create my OWN hurricane related website? You betcha....but there's NO WAY I want to turn back the clock. I paid my dues those late nights from 1974 to 1999....especially during those early days before cable tv was available here (when I nearly went crazy from no wx data frustration after 11 p.m. at night). If it hadn't been for A.M. Weather in those days, I'd probably have went bonkers....man I loved that show.

PW

[Persepone]

Hey Trader Ron...

I listened to ships radio on an old prewar Grundig floor model radio that used the radiators in the house as an antenna (much to my mother's dismay)...

The problem was that I spent weekends and a bunch of money (first I had to scour alleys, etc. for bottles to return to the store for 2 cents each) on tubes for the radio... then you sat down at the store with a cigar box full of tubes in front of the tube tester to figure out which one was the bad one....

Transistor radios were a wonderful invention!

[PTrackerLA]

I agree that we're all very spoiled these days. I remember not too long ago watching TWC for hours on end when storms were approaching the US. It's much better now just making a few clicks with the mouse and boom you have all the information you need without having to watch storm stories .

[dhweather]

Boy, the memories this thread brings back.

Once upon a time, I would get TWO's from Compuserve, way back when
(1982-3) when they were proprietary dialup.

God, I'm getting old!

[bevgo]

This really does bring back memories. The first storm I really tracked Was Frederick and I got my info from the local TV--not much info and from NOAH on my police scanner. At least I think it was NOAH. LOL. Frederick was said to become a TS just before hitting my home town of Meridian but I would swear it was still a Hurricane. I remember hearing on the news that the eye was passing over us. Working in the ER that night I had a birds eye view. The weather was horrible with heavy wind and torrential rain--then suddenly nothing. The sun came out and that was it. No more storm. I was without any power for almost 2 weeks due to a tree falling and taking out the power hook-up on the side of the house. We were in the very last bunch to get power back.

I tried to tell my family that he was heading for us and to prepare but they just would not listen-LOL. I was the only one that had hurricane supplies.