The Other Chip

I normally don't blog at 3:27am, but I thought I'd dash off this quick note during the middle of this very loud overnight thunderstorm.  The lightning and thunder are very close.  My 6-year-old daughter is beside me.  She's scared to death of storms, particularly the noisy ones.  If she ain't sleeping, I ain't sleeping. 

We took tons of calls tonight from viewers who were upset with us for interrupting House.   Tons of calls, and many more went unanswered.  We aboslutely understand your concern.  Many of us at FOX 4 like House too, and a lot of us working in the newsroom tonight were hoping to watch it at home on our VCRs, DVRs and Tivos after work. 

But please understand our first concern at FOX 4 is your safety.  When the National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning for southeastern Tarrant County, about 8:15pm, we had to go on the air right away to tell those people about the imminent danger.   Tornado sirens were sounding in Arlington, and later Grand Prairie.  Spotters were seeing low-level rotation in the clouds overhead.  This was a very dangerous situation.

Folks asked us why don't we just give the warning, and then return to regular programming.  Most of the time we do that.  We try to keep our "cutin's" as brief as we can.  But when there's an imminent tornado threat, we're going to stay on the air as long as public safety is at immediate risk.  And there was a tornado-capable storm passing over about 200,000 people.  And with nearby storms dropping golf-ball and even baseball-sized hail stones (confirmed by trained spotters), that's a life-threatening situation too.

All during our coverage, we were in close touch with the National Weather Service and with the ham-radio operators spotting the skies around the storm.  As soon as the storm threat passed, we wrapped up.  (Keep in mind there was another storm with a hail threat emerging in Hood and Bosque counties at the end of the 8pm hour.)

So far there's been no reports of wind or tornado damage, and no tornado was ever spotted in the Arlington area, despite the persistent low-level rotation.   But as we learned from the Wylie tornado the other night, tornadoes can spin up with no warning.  And they can cause significant damage.  And they can hurt or kill people.  

We don't like making viewers angry at us.  But our first priority is keeping you safe.  To those callers I spoke with tonight, and to all the rest of you who are upset with us, all I can say is that we'll do our best to provide the same level of warning when a storm like this comes to your neighborhood.  And it will, one of these days.

Thanks for sharing your concerns and complaints, and thanks for reading our reply here.

The myFOXdfw.com blogs are a great place to share your  weather photos.  It's easy to start your own  blog and to post your photos.  Or, you can e-mail photos to fox4weather@kdfwfox4.com .  You send them, we'll post them or  even air  them on TV!

 

We've got severe weather moving in to  North Texas right now.  Here are two more ways you can stay 4Warned!

1) Look on our blog front page for the updated Severe Weather Update blog.   We'll update this throughout the day, so check  back frequently.  Better yet, look on the right hand side of  that  blog page, and click on the link that says SUBSCRIBE.  Now you'll get an e-mail  update everytime we update that blog. 

2)  Also, check out our new Severe  Weather  Tracker.  Click on  Weather, and look for the tab on the left that says "Severe Weather".  This is a state-of-the-art tool that uses the power of Google Maps to give you a dynamic look at real-time conditions.  You can zoom-in and zoom-out.  You can  overlay watches and warnings.  It's very slick. 

If you have comments about any of these features, please post them as comments below, and I'll try to help you out!

Here's a new and fast way to stay on top of developing severe weather situations.

We're starting a new Severe Weather Update blog on this site.  Whenever severe weather threatens, the FOX 4-Warn weather team will provide regular updates to this blog.

How will you know when they update the blog?  Simple, first go to the blog:

 

http://community.myfoxdfw.com/blogs/SevereWeatherUp
date

 

Then look at the bottom of the right-hand column for the link, "Subscribe to this blog via e-mail".  When you subscribe, you'll get an e-mail each time the blog is updated with new information.

 

Let us know how you like it1

So far today I've seen one wooden fence blown over.  And the FMPD and FD had part of Morriss Road blocked (just north of FM1171) where it looked like a tree was either lying on power lines or threatening to do so.

The skies are getting brown to the west.

If I wasn't working at FOX 4 today, I'd be in western Oklahoma (or the eastern Texas panhandle) right about now, getting ready for tonight's big weather.  Chance of supercells forming in front of this squall line.  Any that do form could drop a tornado very quickly. 

The only drawback with today's setup is that the storms may not fire up until after dark.  That makes chasing even more dangerous, with a lower payoff probability for getting that great tornado photo or film.

Just drove from downtown Dallas back to Flower Mound. Steady rain, heavy at times, while I was driving through Irving and past Grapevine Mills. My car's outdoor thermometer registered 31 degrees while driving into Flower Mound. Don't know if that thermometer is totally accurate, though usually it's biased on the high side by a degree or two. I was constantly looking for any sign of ice -- a glossy road surface, or chunks forming in puddles. But I saw none. It was more dangerous driving through the puddles that would appear here and there.

At home, we got another quarter-inch of rain, which puts us now near 3 inches for the weekend.

A little drizzle, but that's all. The tree branches are frozen, but there was nothing frozen on the ground. I had no problems driving this morning. I hope the heavy rains stay away today, because I'd like to get home by noon.

Roads up in the Mound are wet and dry. Didn't see any ice on my dinner-time trip to the store.

Ice has formed on the tree branches and on my mailbox, but so far none on the ground.

Rainfall has been substantial: 2.78" the past 2 days. That will help the lakes!

More to come!

If you run into ice this weekend, take some pictures and post them here on our blog!

Here's one of my favorite family photos from winter blasts of past. This was about 2003 when we had a 2" snowfall. My enterprising then-7-year-old son Andrew built a pretty good snowman.



Let's see what you got!

Don't let the threat of morning rain scare you away from the Plano Balloon Festival. The rain will move through this morning, and the rest of the day should be quite pleasant and breezy.

I look forward to seeing you in Plano this afternoon. I'll be at the FOX 4 booth from 12noon to 2pm today, and we can talk all about the blogs if you like.

Here's a list of the real celebrities you can meet today:

10am to 12noon: Megan Henderson, Baron James, Heather Hays and Shaun Rabb
11am to 1pm: Natasha Curry
12noon to 2pm: Clarice Tinsley, Steve Eagar and Steve Noviello
4pm to 6pm: Team Traffic with Chip Waggoner and Todd Carruth

See you there!

We hope you're watching our blog coverage on Good Day Saturday, from 8am to 10am each Saturday morning on FOX 4. If you're watching, you're seeing Baron James' three "So You Think You Can Blog" segments, all about our new Community, and all about you, the bloggers. And perhaps you're sticking around until 9:45 to watch me show you a live look at the site.

And if you're watching me, you know we have this little incentive every Saturday morning for our Good Day viewers. I tell our viewers that the best blogs posted that morning will get front page on our site all day Saturday and for at least a good chunk of Sunday.

Congratulations to our winners this week. We had a lot of posts under the "News" heading, a few in Sports and Entertainment. But we didn't get any new blogs in Sports or Traffic. So if you want your best chance of blog-fame next weekend, post something there. Your odds of getting picked for the front page might be better!

Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend!

Chip

The family and I ended our vacation to Canada with a pair of flights from Calgary to Denver, connecting to DFW. Our final flight required us to fly through those Saturday night storms that popped up over north Texas.

While in Denver, I checked the DFW weather, then called my buddy Ron Jackson here at the station. I asked Ron whether there would be storms near DFW Airport at our scheduled landing time, 9:30pm. He said yeah, there would be storms.

I was surprised then when we took off from Denver on time, thinking instead that the FAA would keep the plane grounded in Denver until the storms could safely pass.

United Airlines lets you listen to cockpit chatter with air-traffic control, a very cool feature. Doing this during a difficult flight gave me new appreciation for pilots and the air traffic controllers.

Shortly after takeoff, our pilots were told to change course and fly over Oklahoma City and make an approach from the north, as opposed to the northwest. It was very bumpy from Oklahoma City back to Dallas, as the pilots and ATC tried to find a "comfortable cruising altitude". There wasn't one because of the storms lined up to the west of I-35 down toward DFW.

What impressed me most was the give-and-take between the pilots and ATC, and the smooth exchange of information. The woman at the microphone at the FW regional ATC was brilliant in her handling of all the pilots on her radar. She was smooth, reassurring, helpful and energetic in her efforts to help pilots navigate safely around the storms.

Sure enough, even though the storms were all around the west side of the airport, they stayed away by about 10-15 miles for another hour or two, and that allowed our flight to land safely.

I hope this week's heat is not a sign that we're in for a long, hot summer. Last year, we had that record-setting heat for that third weekend in May, but then it settled down. We had record heat last summer, but not until September.

We need the rain though.