How’s The Weather In Nebraska?

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As you might know, I’m on-the-air in Nebraska now. It’s News Channel Nebraska, a string of stations serving mostly small towns in Nebraska. I do their forecasts from my TV studio at home.

For most of the people watching, we’re the first local television source for news ever. Ever!

Local news comes from Sioux City, Iowa. Take a guess how often these regions are covered by a station sixty miles and one state away?

NCN’s stations operate like jukeboxes. All the segments are recorded to hard drive then pieced together like a puzzle.

I upload my weathercasts via FTP. Each is slightly different depending on the slot it runs in. I record four separate takes in three daily sessions. I am the only human in-the-chain to get on-air.

A few months in, Nebraska’s weather has been very quiet. We’re finally getting rain Thursday/Friday. Some thunder too.

I’m already feeling pre-winter forecast anxiety. There’s something I hadn’t missed. Winter storms are brutal because some aspect of the forecast is always wrong.

You can’t rest easy. Weather changes quickly, the wind screams across the flat plains, snow and rain are more intense. Storms explode.

I need to understand the residents’ sensibility. In a windy place how much higher is the threshold for caring?

Once again I find myself living their weather. I decided not to get my car washed yesterday because of the upcoming rain… that forecast isn’t for here.

2 thoughts on “How’s The Weather In Nebraska?”

  1. If the forecasted El Nino develops as they (NOAA) say it should…it might be a more tame winter in the Northern Plains than typical. Although Nebraska will never have the more stable weather of the lower East Coast or lower West Coast, there are times when sunny and dry weather lasts for weeks and weeks.

    1. Yes. The most common El Nino effect on the Plains is warmer temperatures during the winter. It doesn’t affect precip in a noticeable way.

      Of course, this is climatology we’re talking about. Actual weather on any individual day or season can and does vary.

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