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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

When weather’s severe, the public needs to know - even during TV time

Michelle Boss

Stormy weather rolled through the Inland Northwest last Sunday, and I was the lucky one filling in at the KREM weather center that afternoon and evening.

When we get thunderstorms this time of year, it is usually the threat of dry lightning and the associated wildfire danger that is at the forefront. Fortunately, last week’s storms brought heavy rainfall along with the frequent lightning. On the flip side, many of these storms, which originated in northern Oregon, also had a history of producing damaging winds as well as large hail.

With that in mind, the National Weather Service issued several severe thunderstorm warnings, and parts of Eastern Washington and North Idaho were briefly under a severe thunderstorm watch.

Once the watches or warnings are issued, it is my job to pass the information on to the public. That can be done a number of ways. The quickest way is to send a crawl across the top or bottom of your screen. Since a warning may only cover one county, those affected can get the basic information about the storm, while others can watch their TV programs uninterrupted.

Under certain circumstances, however, if there are multiple warnings, a large amount of information to pass on, or a particularly threatening situation, we may decide to break into programming. Sometimes we can do this during a commercial break, but there may be circumstances where we feel it is in the public’s best interest to cut into programming immediately.

During popular shows, some people may not appreciate missing even one minute of the program, especially if they are not affected by the latest storm. But since our viewing area covers a large part of the Inland Northwest, outside of the immediate Spokane and Coeur d’Alene area, we need to make sure all of our viewers get the necessary weather information to stay safe.

El Niño’s back

Well, it’s official, we are now in an El Niño pattern again.

The waters in the equatorial Pacific are gradually warming, and El Niño conditions are expected to persist into the 2009-’10 winter season.

El Niño winters have historically been much warmer than normal across the Northwest, bringing about more lower elevation rain rather than snow.

Winter is still many months away, however, and we are just moving into the warmest part of the summer season.

For the last full weekend in July, it looks like a building ridge of high pressure may bring us the hottest temperatures yet.

Michelle Boss can be reached at weatherboss@comcast.net.