AndrewFinlayson's Blog

This last weekend we had severe weather in the Chicago area.  Our weather team had warned us about the possibility and had plans in place to cover the event.  When seven tornadoes struck Northern Illinois, we broke into programming seven times...including one extended cut in for the time the tornadoes were touching down in our area.

We are very thankful that these tornadoes did not kill anyone and the injuries and damage, while serious, could have been much worse. 

We want to thank everyone who called in with damage reports.  It was because of viewers calling our newsroom that we knew how serious the storms were.  We want to also thank everyone who e-mailed in pictures and video.   At one point we had some 2,500 people in our MyFoxChicago.com weather chat room at one time.  That was so impressive that two trade magazines, "TV Week" and "Broadcast and Cable", wrote stories about the on air and on line success of the station.

Amy Freeze has information in her blogs and weather section about the size and the intensity of the storm so I will refer you to her for more details on this historic event.   She is using new 3-d technology to analyze storms and I hope you had a chance to see this new way to look at storms.  She has shown some amazing images over the last couple of days as she examined what caused all the damage.

Last but not least, we also want those who called in with kind comments and e-mailed their thanks for the extended breaking weather coverage to know how much that meant to everyone here.   It is our job to alert you to severe weather like this but a big part of our "pay check" comes from knowing that we helped. 

As always, we welcome your feedback.

Andrew Finlayson

News Director