This is not my first time at the rodeo. I’ve covered hurricanes or their remnants a few times here in Connecticut. My first was Hurricane Gloria in 1985.
I was thinking about Gloria while sitting across from Al Terzi earlier this afternoon. Al was our main anchor in New Haven when Gloria came.
Back then TV stations weren’t as anxious to hop on a story and beat it to death! OK. Exaggeration.
Though Gloria was coming in the afternoon we ran our regular morning programming. That included ABC’s Good Morning America.
In 1984 GMA’s weather presenter was meteorologist Dave Murray. He’s in St. Louis now.
On the morning of Gloria’s arrival a meteorologist at ABC drew a tracking chart which was then given to an artist who produced the graphic seen on-the-air. Using a paintbox type program the artist drew the projected path exactly where told.
Unfortunately, the computer used the pen’s location as the left border of the line, not the center! That pushed the storm’s path out toward Rhode Island.
All morning Dave Murray would do the forecast, including the tracking map and toss to the local weather. Then I’d come on and try and undo his tracking map! All this in a very limited time frame.
Frustrating? Yup!
Actually, I still get upset thinking about it.
