AndrewFinlayson's Blog

Our team here at Fox Chicago just put up the camera on top of the Shedd and as a result we have one of the most spectacular skylines available to you whenever you want.

I hope you'll share this image with your friends and family.

If you are one of the many people who has access to the internet on your mobile, we have a new service for you.  We've had it out for a time but now we've tweaked it a little and will start to promote it tonight.

http://m.foxweatherwatch.com/

It is a great service that offers a look at our Live Power Doppler Radar on your cell phone.  If you want to know about today's severe weather or just have a quick glance at tomorrow's forecast, this is a great way to get your weather on the go.

We hope you will like it so much, you'll want to share it with a friend.  If you have suggestions on how to improve the service, let us know.  I used it today to avoid the worst of the storms as I walked to an appointment today. 

 

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

 

 

This morning was the first time in a long time that I didn't have to walk over ice to get to work.  I have the good luck to live downtown and be able to make a ten minute walk each day to Fox Chicago.  With the recent warm up, most of the ice was gone, only a few stubborn slivers remained where once huge piles of snow stood.

What a relief.

For much of the last three or four months I've made this walk with the expectation of cold winds and ice on the sidewalk.  It is the yearly price we pay for living in such a great city.

We may still get a blast of cold.  You are never safe in Chicago from a sudden turn in the weather which brings me to the point of this short note. 

Each day we look to see if Amy is wearing her snow pin.  Some of us are wondering if we could get her a spring pin, something to let people know about the first day when it will hit 70 degrees in Chicago.

What do you think?

If you are really into weather, you know that Fox News Chicago is the place to turn for the most accurate up to the minute forecasts.

You can now go beyond our live weather cameras and Live Power Doppler (which you can find on the weather tab above), with a visit to weather radars and live coverage of storms all across the nation.

Go to LiveNewsCameras.com and see these different feeds live as they are happening around the country.  We hope to expand this to weather pictures everywhere in the world.

We recently had a visit from members of the Chicago chapter of the AMS.  We had a chance to talk about how Fox Chicago is working hard to bring the best weather coverage to the region and they took a close up look at Live Power Doppler.

If you are not familiar with the AMS, it is the American Meteorological Society, an organization that many of the forecasters on television belong to.  I'm proud to say that Tammie Souza, a key part of our morning team, is on the AMS Board of Broadcast Meteorology.

I'm also proud to say that both Tammie and Amy Freeze, our Chief Meteorologist, are AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist.  There are only 196 such people in the country.

This is what the AMS says about the CBM program.

"In January 2005, the AMS introduced a new program called the Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM) program, intended to raise the professional standard in broadcast meteorology and encourage a broader range of scientific understanding, especially with respect to environmental issues. The goal of the CBM program is to certify that the holder meets specific educational and experience criteria and has passed rigorous testing in their knowledge and communication of meteorology and related sciences needed to be an effective broadcast meteorologist."

Having two CBM on our staff shows the commitment of our station to the most accurate information you can use to plan your day and protect your family.

If you would like more information on the Chicago Chapter of the AMS, click here.

 

 

 

 

Last night we met with the Chicago chapter of the American Meteorology Society.  It was a big group with a wide range of people who are passionate about weather.

 

They had a chance to see our Live Power Doppler up close and hear about our storm coverage as Monday's storms swept through the region.  I was proud to be able to say that Fox News Chicago was the first Chicago television station to be on the air and warn people that a tornado had been confirmed.  We hope that our weather break ins provided the necessary warnings for people in the path of this tornado.  Our radar was able to track the rotation and twisting of winds in the storm and give street by street level positions of some of the strongest gusts.

 

We also streamed our breaking weather coverage on our website and had many people participate in a live chat where we talked about the storm damage.  I want to thank everyone who gave us eyewitness reports from around the region.

 

We are glad that no one was seriously injured and we are working to cover the recovery efforts.  If you have any thoughts about our coverage, please know we appreciate the feedback.

 

Click here for the link to our radar weather chat page.

I took my first fall of the season the other day.  It happens to almost everyone at some point during the winter.  Tonight Amy Freeze is forecasting more ice and snow and she is sending our great photographers and reporters out to find power outages and other problems.   

 

 

It seems to me that ice and snow used to be a lot more fun.

 

 

Anyone growing up here in Chicago can recall the thrill of sledding on a hill that is newly iced.  A hard freeze always made the snow better for sledding, particularly for those of us who had an old fashioned wooden sled with narrow metal runners.  Today such a sled might be outlawed as dangerous; it certainly caused a few minor injuries in my younger days. 

 

 

We would head out to the specially built sledding hills in Arlington Heights and the surrounding communities...and promptly go down the side that we were not supposed to use.  The thrill of that short few seconds of near vertical drop easily rivaled the longer safer run...although when iced up, you could go extremely fast on the gentler slope. 

 

 

My sister and I would get on to increase the weight and speed...with the inevitable result of hitting a bump or rut and both of us would get tossed into the air without our sled anywhere nearby.

 

 

One of the reasons why I loved the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips was that it captured the pure thrill of those snow days.   As a news director, "snow" means tracking it on a million watt dual polarity radar system…but at age eight, it meant sledding.

 

 

Today many schools were cancelled throughout the region.  Our school closing system gave the news to thousands of school children...”no school today”.  Is there any happier statement in the English language for those ten and under?

 

 

If you have sledding memories, or if you know of a good hill to go sledding on, please let us know.  We are also looking for people who blog on their own about weather.  If you know of anyone, please have them contact us at weather@foxchicago.com.

 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

In our weather section you will find Live Power Doppler.  It was designed to help us with storms like the one threatening this weekend.  Because of the power and the unique design of the radar, it can tell us where it is snowing, sleeting, and icing up.  We can track these different conditions street by street because the radar is designed to examine the storm from two different angles.

There is a lot of science behind this but the best radar in the world won't help unless you have the best people to use it.  Amy Freeze, Tammie Souza, Mark Strehl and Steve Baron are using the radar to track the storms that are approaching the Chicago area. 

We welcome your calls and e-mails this weekend to tell us about conditions in your neighborhood.  We also want to invite you to send in any e-mail pictures.  You can do so very quickly at:

 

http://media.myfoxchicago.com/wx/index.html  

Just click on the “Upload Photos” tab.

 

 

Let your friends and family know that Fox News Chicago has invested in having the best radar, best weather tracking equipment and best weather team in the Midwest…available on air or on line 24/7.

 

 

Thank you and have a safe weekend.

 

 

 

When I woke up this morning, just as Amy Freeze had predicted (and yes, that is her real name), Tammie Souza and the Good Day Chicago morning team told me that there were some flurries happening in the Northern suburbs.

Having grown up here, I knew just how nice these last couple of weeks have been.  Last year we had snow in October and this year, on a Friday in November, I actually sat outside and had lunch.  The waitress was even laughing about how she didn't think she would have to worry about serving anyone outside once the dark days of November rolled around.

We enjoyed it while it lasted and we still have a few warmer days ahead but we all know that we are about to enter the deep freeze.  We know that it is part of the charm of living in a full four season part of the country but I must confess that as I went by my neighbors standing at the bus stop this morning, wearing their woolen hats for the first time in many months, I wanted the warmth to hang on a little longer...say until mid December and then have the cold come and give us that white Christmas that the song is all about.

 

If you watch our station or use this website regularly, you know that we have some of the best forecasters in the nation working for Fox Chicago.  Tammie Souza, Steve Baron, Mark Strehl and Amy Freeze all have outstanding credentials and experience with the most powerful broadcast weather radar in the country, Fox Live Power Doppler. 

They have used this radar during some of the storms this summer to provide advance warning of severe weather and now they are gearing up to provide you the best storm tracking of any station in the Midwest. 

Fox Live Power Doppler has a unique ability to look at storms in two different ways so that we can see exactly when rain turns to sleet and sleet turns to snow.  This radar is so powerful in this regard that the National Weather Service has gone to the same company that we bought our radar from to replace their existing radars.

For this winter, the only such radar in our state is found on Fox Chicago and MyFoxChicago.com.  We have a story about the radar and a look at this winter's severe weather appearing in a special program airing this Sunday following the Green Bay Packer's game.  This half hour special will help you prepare for cold weather and have a long range forecast. 

We hope you have a chance to watch the program and we welcome your feedback.  This is just another example of how Fox News Chicago is committed to giving you the best coverage of weather in the region.

 

As someone who has lived and worked in California, I have witnessed first hand the power of wildfires similar to the ones now burning in Southern California.  This time of year with the high winds and dry conditions on the ground is always dangerous.  

Aided by wind, the fires can move with surprising speed and the intensity of the heat can be a shock.  I remember once working with a reporter and camera person, two people of great personal courage, who were working a wild fire when it came raging up towards their vehicle.

The footage of their near escape was frightening.  These two journalists were careful but the fire was fierce and surrounded them on the hillside they were driving on.  The fire swept around them in an instance but fortunately they could quickly move through the worst of the flames and on to safety.

It was a close call that no one could forget.  In the years following, we had some of our staff take training to learn how to survive a fire but the best advice given was the obvious, stay clear of the fire and always have an escape route.   The lesson was clear, respect mother nature, particularly when she is angry.

As we watch the fires on television, we will think of those who have lost so much and respect the firefighters who take these risks every day.  I hope you will also think of the television crews who are working hard to bring you the best coverage possible.

 

We have been working with our Live Power Doppler Radar for the last several months and have seen a tremendous response to it on air and on line.

Many people have bookmarked our website pages devoted to displaying the latest radar images. 

We have several versions depending on what you need. 

We have a page that allows you to see the images from the radar and then pick the region you would like to look more closely at.

http://media.myfoxchicago.com/weather/loop/main_loop
.html

We have a page that allows you to see the radar sweeping in a video feed you can watch just like our weather team.  In fact, you might see it move about as they study the weather.

http://media.myfoxchicago.com/HTML/live1.html

We want to know if these pages work for you or if you would like us to make the pages different.  On a morning with storms like we've already had overnight, this sort of 24/7 access can be a big help to many people.

Thank you for watching and visiting our website, we do appreciate your support.

 

You hear a lot about new products.  New this, improved that, better for you and so on.

News people often feel uncomfortable in telling you if they have done something new and improved.  They usually don't want to sound like they are boasting and never want to get away from the facts.

Our Fox WeatherWatch Team has spent a lot of time and efforts with others in our newsroom and throughout our station to install a state of the art radar system.  It officially goes on the air tonight.

We are calling it Live Power Doppler.  It is a pretty straight forward name for a very powerful system but the title of the equipment is not the most important item, it is the value it will have to you during severe weather.  It will give you at home a far better look at storms vs. any other radar in the region.

Here's the official press release.

FOX Chicago Launches “FOX Live Power Doppler”

 

 

Next Generation Radar System and Midwest’s Most Powerful Storm Prediction Technology Makes its Debut

 

 

CHICAGO, May 07, 2007 – Fox Chicago today launches the “Fox Chicago Live Power Doppler,” the Midwest’s first dual polarity radar.  Situated on the tallest radar tower in the state, this powerful new technology will allow the station to provide more accurate, up to the second and in-depth images of storm systems approaching the Chicago area.   The system will be unveiled on “FOX Chicago News at Nine.”

 

 

“We’re proud to be bringing Chicago the fastest and most precise weather prediction tools available,” said Patrick Mullen, Vice President and General Manager, FOX Chicago.  “We’ll be able to inform our viewers sooner and more accurately of severe weather conditions, giving them the time they need to act accordingly.”

 

 

“FOX Live Power Doppler” is able to look at storms both vertically and horizontally through the use of dual polarization radar, giving FOX Chicago the most accurate and descriptive radar images available in the market.  These images are able to focus on an area as small as a single home, about the same size as a typical Illinois tornado, allowing the station to track severe storms live block by block.  The dual pulses in the radar make precipitation detection easier indicating to meteorologists how much and what type of precipitation is falling with greater precision.   

 

“Dual polarization radar is a breakthrough for weather forecasting.  It is very exciting to have access to such a powerful storm prediction system and to be able to provide viewers with explicit details about the weather in their area,” said Amy Freeze, Chief Meteorologist, FOX Chicago. 

 

To boost the accuracy and timeliness of its storm tracking displays, FOX Chicago is also partnering with Baron, the first broadcast weather vendor to generate proprietary radar algorithms.  Baron’s weather prediction models successfully projected Hurricane Katrina’s westerly arc toward New Orleans as early as 72 hours in advance.  This additional data and clarity will allow the FOX Chicago WeatherWatch team to better explain the direction and severity of storms at an earlier stage.   

 

 

This storm analysis software, Live Power Doppler Max, was used on April 26th, while still being installed and tested by Fox meteorologists and Baron radar technicians to help track and identify two tornadoes approaching the Chicago area and Northern Indiana.  Fox Chicago was the first to break into regular programming to provide live storm tracking, interview eye-witnesses and report storm damage.

 

 

“Fox Live Power Doppler Radar” data is also available at all times on www.MyFoxChicago.com.

 

 

 

FOX Chicago is owned-and-operated by the FOX Television Stations group, one of the nation's largest owned-and-operated network broadcast groups, comprising 35 stations in 26 markets, covering nearly 45% of U.S. television homes.  This includes six duopolies in the top 10 markets: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D.C. and Houston; as well as duopolies in Minneapolis, Phoenix and Orlando.

 

 

I am blessed to still have my two grandparents on my mother's side still alive. I went to visit them outside of Milwaukee last weekend. They are in their nineties and still living on their own.

We had dinner from one of their favorite restaurants, warm filling food that's perfect on a cold night and we talked about the world and all the changes in it.

Of course we had to talk about the weather. You can always count on some rough winter weather in Wisconsin. Tonight they are under a winter weather watch and I thought about them as I watched the pictures being fed in from our sister stations in Milwaukee and points to the north.

Cars that had gone off the side of the road and I saw coverage of the traffic jams that come along with several inches. There were people brushing off snow and the usual shots of folks bundled up with their faces mostly hidden.

You could see it in their eyes...too soon, too soon.

I grew up in this weather, living in Milwaukee, Detroit, and outside Chicago but for a number of years lived in places where snow fall was rare...in fact, a dusting of it would send people reaching for their cameras.

It is not snowing here in Chicago as I write, but I am starting to wonder if my blood was thinned by life in those warmer places. I hope not. One of things we Midwesterners pride our selves on is being able to take whatever mother nature dishes out. I want to be like my grandparents, someday sitting in a warm house looking out at the snow and remembering over eight decades of winters, being able to compare the big storms and the vibrant springs that always follow.

We'd like to share your winter memories as we head into our first November flurries.