Remembering WCBS 880: The importance of weather on the radio [Ep. 506]

I'm James Bron that's Frank straight this week on the Carolina weather group we're talking about the importance of weather on the radio it's Wednesday August 28th 2024 welcome to this week's edition of the Carolina weather group I'm James bryton and Charlotte that is Frank Strait in Columbia South Carolina Frank good to see you good to see you too James this week talking about the importance of weather on the radio inviting folks watching live with us right now on YouTube on Facebook or watching us back later drop in the comments who your favorite weather meteorologist is on the radio who do you remember listening to when you grow were growing up who did you depend on to find out if whether or not they was going to be school the next day because one of those people who I grew up listening to on the radio is that man right over there if I can get the finger pointing correct uh Frank when you first came on the Carolina weather group as a guest you had recently departed if I recall the timeline correctly your your career in broadcast weather radio at Aki weather uh where you had been doing reports for stations throughout the country but I knew you from WCBS News Radio 880 in New York where you would file reports for um and so the fact that you are a Rock Hill South Carolina native and now a co-host of this weather podcast um seemed like a natural fit to talk with you a little a little bit a about your time filing reports for WCBS and other stations and also the bigger picture importance of radio because uh for folks who don't know the unfortunate timely Peg to this week's episode of the Carolina weather group is that the all news format on the station that had been known as WCBS 880 a.m. in New York ended on Sunday after nearly 60 years and I know not everyone's going to be familiar with radio stations in New York Frank obvious ly this station though a bit different from any other radio station shutting down not only did it have the wattage that at night you could hear it here in the Carolinas on that am dial but also it came with it such a legacy of CBS News I I understand not everyone might be a huge fan of news or or history of news but if you just think of any legendary CBS newsers chances are they walk those Halls at some point that station because it was living breathing radio journalism Frank and it's so sad to see it Go indeed it is uh you've heard uh as you mentioned a lot of those you heard of Charles Charles Al Charles O good what the man's trying to say and he was one of the anchors on WCB s880 back in the 70s and 80s um who else I mean you know some of the people who were there long term were were there in the 80s Craig Allen their meteorologist and probably the best in the business when it comes to radio uh weather uh he started there in 79 no it was 82 I think when he started it was uh his backup Todd Glickman who uh started in 79 I think so and they were with WCBS 880 all the way to the B so many years other years who is with a radio station nobody 40 something years nobody today's economy for that matter correct it just doesn't happen it really never has happened very often but uh probably not again years yeah maybe not and the name Charles OSG good may sound familiar to folks because he got his start or or or had a stop over there at that all news format he would eventually go on to host CBS Sunday mornings right so you may know him from that Ed Bradley Charles caralt that's the name I was thinking Charles caral was the other one I was trying to remember yeah uh Jamie B watching right now with us on YouTube kind of sad when WL 1560 Lancaster went off the air and I think that is one of the things that makes this story Frank so relatable because while I'm from New York and you filed reports for this such a legendary station there are lots of other examples of Hometown radio stations going off the air and I can remember as a kid you know whether it was WCBS or or even actually our hometown station where I grew up on Long Island we all tuned to WK 97.5 uh they do still exist but they used to I don't think they do this anymore they would read all the school closings right and I'm sure that's not a unique story to me you would tune into that am dial during a snowstorm or FM dial during a snowstorm to find out whether or not you had to go to school that day absolutely when I was a kid it was wrhi in Rock Hill 1340 on your am dial I think they sign will cast on FM now but uh they're still there and they're they're actually still doing it right they're actually still mostly local content uh around their around clock there so uh that that that pleases me because not many smaller Market stations are doing that and wrhi they you know they barely get into the south end of of the Charlotte area their signals relatively weak or at least it was when I was a kid maybe it's been the wattage has been bumped up since then I'm not sure but um wrhi was the station you listen to when you want to know what was going on in Rock Hill uh just like when you want to know what was going on across the southeast you'd flip it over to 1110 less than WBT yeah when kid now BT is another good example because there are one of those stronger signals that could be picked up from afar with some caveats direction corre right because they're a directional station yes one of the stations that did not have a directional problem was WCBS so if you lived in the Carolinas if you lived in Georgia you could actually at night if the weather was clear and the the hos spere was cooperating you could actually pick up WCBS 880 out of New York and that goes back to the early hey days of radio before TV before the internet where in case of emergency the FCC wanted everyone at least during the hours where the absence of sunlight would permit to have some emergency radio station to tune into and that's the type of station that we are talking about here that yes they did a lot of local news but they were that emergency station I can remember growing up in New York they played a huge role in in my lifespan of course on 911 during the 2003 blackout during the earthquake that struck so much of the East Coast but even outside of those big news events they were always there with their wheel you knew based on what time it was what you could expect from them that they were dependent on before GPS's in the car you could tune in at 8 minutes past the hour 18 minutes past the hour 28 minutes past the hour for traffic and weather together on the eights to get your traffic and your weather and I think that's where you come into the story that's right that is where I come into the story by the way real another quick story about AM radio being the emergency backup uh kudos to the folks back in the day at wptf 680 and Raleigh who were they have a they don't have a superpowered 50,000 watt station channel or or or or or power level but uh they I think they're 25,000 watt so it is strong and when Hugo hit Charleston um the radio stations you know category 4 hurricane blew all the the transmitters down and they had no power for the fuse that did survive and that was a lot of the case up to burtle beach in some cases up the Sumpter in Columbia and nobody was on the air because they either had no transmitter they had no power but up in Raleigh uh 680 wptf was and people would call in at night to let folks know down in in Charleston say hey we're listening to you down in Charleston so you know help us out there's emergency supplies available here such and such is going to be open tomorrow uh where you can get things that you need and they were kind of a Lifeline for the people in Charleston and uh it's you know one of those one of those things it's it's great and you know it's 300 miles away but the signal was able to reach Charleston pretty good especially if everything else was knocked out right um so comment with us right now let us know what your go-to radio station is or was what is your emergency Lifeline to the outside world when cell phones TV electricity the internet may be down that analog radio is still there for you um taking us back around to this concept that WCBS had honed was these 10minute every 10-minute traffic reports and weather reports and now Frank it would be safe to say that you were not an employee of WCBS right but you were a you worked for a contractor or a vendor who was a part of the fleet of folks Who provided these Dependable weather reports you were in Pennsylvania is that right well that's right State College PA is where where my former employer Aki weather is located and that's the way it would work uh during the DriveTime hours Craig Allen was uh usually the guy uh providing the weather forecast he'd be doing that live most of the the spots uh would be reported live uh sometimes Todd Glickman would fill in for him and then uh when neither of them were available that's when zaky weather guys would fill in even during the drive time uh during the rest of the day uh ordinarily that was us at weather that that was providing that and um as for me personally uh I would be doing the occasionally afternoon Drive slot but more likely in the evening 8 to midnight i' I'd be on WCBS and uh so spots sometimes they were live it kind of depended on the weather and sometimes they were recorded it just uh depended on how active the weather was and a severe thunderstorm situation I'd be going on every every 10 minutes at every 8 and uh also sometimes at at four after during the main part of the newscast and at 31 to lead the bottom of the hour newscast too so you you might get me eight times an hour if the weather's really busy but in a quieter weather pattern it may only be one or two live reports per hour or three maybe so it you know kind of depended on what the situation was but uh yeah I was on there a lot of the time actually and uh I we WCBS became uh kind of a quiet AI weather affiliate uh for back in 200 4 I guess and I was with them until the my end at acuweather so that was like seven 16 or 17 years uh that I was serving WCBS and still uh that's that's a tiny part of of the W cbs's Legacy but um I'm I'm pleased to say that I was at least a tiny part of that because uh they again they're an iconic station they're at times the number one station in in the the nation's number one market they did top the ratings every now and then uh uh uh even above the the mighty 1010 winds that probably more people have heard of from outside of New York but um nonetheless uh it's it's still a big deal and uh by the way we could touch on that as well the uh the intense rivalry between 880 and 1010 WINS there's some context there that I think is key to understanding how we got to where we are yeah until uh CBS radio or or whoever their successor was Viacom or whatever bought 1010 wins and put them under the same Ruth is 880 uh there was an extremely intense rivalry between those two stations yeah they were they were like two competing newspapers in a in a town eventually it became one which I say that because there's so many you know hyphenated newspapers out there right and that's what it was you're exactly right it was you had these two competing all news AM stations before the days of cable news before the days of internet and they would go head to-head and they did for decades until as Frank said it Consolidated companies acquired companies that acquired companies and the next thing you know the two Rivals are cousins right even even sisters sharing the same staff in some cases so You' hear the same voices on both stations at times I think that was part of where part of where the writing was on the wall is once the yeah staff started getting a little Consolidated once they were on the same ownership and then the economic reality is do you need to am all new stations in 2024 and you mentioned earlier Frank the concept of FM simal cast 1010 WINS got one WCBS didn't right and that added even more value probably to keeping the 101 wins brand I suspect that is the reason why why uh I I I don't know if you could say wins won the battle in the end maybe you could say that maybe you couldn't but uh I think it's the reason why why we still have 101 wins and we don't have 880 now is because uh that 1010 WINS was able to get that f simoc cast which their signal didn't penetrate in the suburbs very well of New York City which is exactly why up on Long Island I knew you and the team at 880 cuz those were the that was the signal we could pick up and that was uh the station that thus then covered me right 1010 was going to co was going to cover the Metro where they were clearest and 880 was going to try to win some of the the suburbs too uh but with an FM signal 1010 winds can get to the suburbs now especially with a strong one I presume it's 100,000 watt FM signal the strongest allowed and that's going to go 75 or 80 miles in every direction if you have a good transmitter location uh Lenny watching on YouTube asked does WCBS have any affiliations to CBS Television or CBS News in the early days yes yep um sort sort of like WBT and WBTV they were under the same roof for a long time together that changed in what the the late 90s when they when they were separated by a a station sale yeah I mean there are stor is that um one of WCBS news radio's legendary newsman Wayne Kitt would tell is that because he was like the adjunct historian on staff um is that when the WCBS radio format launched it was William S paly himself who is associated with the founding and the growth of the CBS network or as they called it then the Colombia broadcasting system it was paly himself who kind of burn this news format and the one story that they were recently telling during their sign off is that he used to have his own hotline into the control room and he could call straight in and say um but I I digress Frank I digress so yes so at some point they did and that actually to Lenny's question was one of the other writings on the wall too because once CBS got out of the radio game and sold off all of their properties as Frank you just mentioned so many other stations have done I think Odyssey the current owners of the 8880 frequency only had like 10 years or so to continue using the WCBS call letters grandfathered in until they'd have to eventually change them so there was a clock tick in there too um Frank let me let me ask you um you were talking about your job at acuweather how many stations would you service besides WCBS oh a lot and it's Coast to Coast it's it's one of the reasons why I I would say that being an employee at WEA especially doing radio work there is is kind of like perfect for an add person uh because you're doing WCBS at 8 after then you move to Chicago and WBBM at 14 after and then you'd be recording wptf feeds at at uh 18 after and to through 21 after and then you would move to a place like um Jacksonville Florida WV you do that for a little while and then you know you're back to WCBS at 28 after and then you go to uh spring field uh Illinois or something U for a little while then you jump to San Antonio uh uh and then you jump to to Nashville uh 650 WSM Nashville's country Legend 650 am WSM um you must have all these all these SL memorized yeah yeah well you say them about 10,000 times over and over again sort of like can I ask you to do a WCBS one no because I might get in trouble so I don't want oh man okay all right I want to I do but uh I better not just because I I don't want to uh get yelled at by my former employer or or WCB or Odyssey I guess I was like I was like there's no one left L yeah but you if you if you and 6:50 a. in in Nashville for example there another one of these uh Clear Channel stations you can pretty easily get them in the Carolinas and and a lot of people do because you're listening to the Grand Old opery there you go uh on 650 a.m. WSM so you're listen a lot of people around the eastern half of the country are listening to them they go a long way in every direction I feel like pre- streaming it was truck drivers who really cracked the code on these Clear Channel stations and by Clear Channel stations we're talking about the ones that the FCC said you go have as much power as you want and just blast that out and there was no one else on 880 on the entire East Coast or um some of these other examples um so you had a lot of stations to service I knew you from WCBS to your point from earlier you know it felt like you guys were part of the team at the time there was no delineation between an acuweather meteorologist and a WCBS meteorologist to our listeners here they were all the same uh what were some of the stories that you can share about some of those big weather events that maybe you intersected with uh well obviously number one that sticks out is going to be Sandy and dealing with the onslaught of all the wind and rain that uh Sandy brought into New York and uh I remember you know having to to go on now again major weather event you're going to have your Ace on most of the time so Craig Allen was covering most of that but you know he can't be on 247 uh so he's on a lot of the time but you know then we're we're picking up uh when when he asked to go to bed and and he also he Greg Allen's one of these guys you wonder if he ever sleeps he's like James do seem like it he's on TV on radio uh because yeah he's on TV he's on actually CBS 2 now uh he was on PX 11 in New York for many years but now he's on WCBS 2 in New York City and uh but anyway he does that he does radio he does some other stuff too so he's going I don't know how he does it I don't know how James span does it either but somehow they they do true um but anyway just remembering the the onslaught and and trying to keep things calm and trying to keep things from people from panicking because you know this bad thing is is coming and you know you want to be honest with people and say yeah this is really bad storm and your power is probably going to go out and uh flood prone areas are going to flood areas that aren't flood prone are going to flood because there's going to be a storm surge and a lot of rain and and you uh you know it's an urban environment there's the places do flood even in heavy rain uh so there's going to be a lot of of issues to deal with and and you're telling people okay here's what you need to do to prepare you need to be ready to go a couple of days days maybe three or four days without power you need to be you know ready to to to have food for yourself and your family because the stores may not be open and you know this is a challenge here because you're talking about a city with what 13 million people in New York now it's a lot number up but a lot biggest city lot in the country right and and that again that's just the city itself there's the densely populated suburbs too that you're talking to and you know it's a a lot of things that you're trying to a lot of points that you're trying to make to people and and not just get get lost in just the forecast oh the winds are going to G to 70 miles an hour oh there's going to be a a five foot storm surge oh there's you know and those stats yeah you have to bring that up but uh you you have to try and you be relatable to people too and say okay there's going to be a big storm surge places that don't normally flood are going to flood maybe some people places that rarely flood are going to flood and a lot of places are going to be impassible in these flood Waters might hang around for a day or so after the storm so because infrastructure issues power may go out water pumps may go out and and so think you may have flooded subway tubes and things like that that have to be worked out before you're going to be able to get around in the city easily again so uh these are all the things we're we're trying to relate to people but also say you know you know don't panic you just follow the instructions uh that we're giving you and if you're asked to evacuate please do evacuate because is you're in a danger zone for flooding uh that that's what you need to evacuate for you hunker down when when it's wind and uh unless you're in like a trailer mobile home or something which you don't see many of those in New York City no yeah uh no but uh you do uh have areas that flood and and it's potentially very uh very serious uh when it comes to a hurricane kind of storm surge with a five or six foot storm surge there so uh you have to to relate that to people and and make sure they that you're doing the best you can to explain to people in terms they can understand what they're going to be dealing with I mean I think your point about not panicking people and and kind of meeting them where they're at is so important because there are situations like Sandy like Katrina in New Orleans where folks might be without power without other information you are literally their only connection to the outside world it sounds dramatic but it's true and so you need to inform but not panic right you got to help these people get through what it is that they are dealing with and let them know that there is hope on the other end of this um you know there are there are big time weather events I mentioned earlier the 2003 blackout uh it was I think in one of those traffic or weather reports every 10 minutes where I realized that I was not the only house without power because suddenly that is your Touchstone to the outside world and it was just like on 9/11 uh the first instance that something was wrong was the traffic helicopter up in the air we have a problem exactly and that was the very first touch point right and you can go back to September 11th 2001 with that where was the first place you heard oh you know oh my God the plane is flown into one of the towers you actually heard that on WCBS because their traffic Guy Tom Kaminsky was flying in a helicopter about a mile away and he actually saw the first plane hit the tower and they were just going to him for a traffic when that happened it gives me goosebumps just talking about there's the Sounder and and they say what's going on the Roose and he says no let's talk about what's going at the World Trade Center he's like for by the way you can listen to that if you're interested uh there's a former uh WCBS uh uh employee I'm not sure if he was a reporter or or or an anchor or what but uh his name's Don swam s s w m he has don.com and you can find on his website that audio from September 11th and hear how the first 20 minutes of that day went down after the plane started hitting the towers there yeah I mean I think if I recall correctly from their signoff special where they went through a lot of the history that the station touched on as an all new station the past 57 years but also just as a broadcast station back to I think their earliest clip was 1926 um you know they talk about they were like as far as they know that's the first broadcast instance from 911 of somebody saying we have a problem was traffic report that was where the outside world first got keyed to something um it we we talked a little bit about how the writing was seemingly on the wall and I think there was a lot of sadness expressed from WCBS employees and loyal listeners and not a lot of people seem surprised it almost seemed like a when and not an if although I think there was still some op ISM that if or excuse me that when was further down the pike into the future um but I think the state of the the radio industry much like the state of the newspaper industry before it is we are running into a News desert or as is applicable to our show a weather desert a term that signifies the closing of local news shops across the country in towns big and small Wayne Kitt talked about it in his sign off as they neared that Midnight Hour Sunday into Monday and the fact that a behemoth of a station like WCBS is not immune to the economic realities I think speaks alarm Bells into supporting Ventures that you at home are dependent upon this is not a pitch for donations this is just uh relaying what I thought Wayne said Frank that was so true which is if there's something in your life that provides a service to you and that service is free find a way to support it right all all you have to do is listen to the commercials and you know maybe try a product that you've heard on there the commercials are I mean yes they're annoying sometimes but on the other hand you know that that's that's how they make their money is by hearing about a product or or telling you about a product that they're being paid to to tell you about um so give give those products a shot if you like the station radio station that you're hearing or the TV station or or cable TV station for that matter you know whatever it may don't just hate on commercials because they're they're taking up so much time but uh yeah you're right there's there's becoming a News desert I mean there was a time that even smaller town stations might have a part-time reporter on duty to put some news stories together and spend three or four hours a day uh you know creating sound files for or or taped sound taped audio for them to play uh during the top and bottom of the hour so that uh you would have some local news content on on that station that doesn't happen anymore um it's all syndicated programming because the station makes more money doing it that way because they don't have to pay a reporter and maybe they couldn't afford to anyway or maybe it's just that they make so much more money now it's hard doing it this way it's hard to justify doing it the other way when you only you know when your radio station that you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for you only bring in know3 or $4,000 a month when you could bring in 12 or $18,000 a month of profit on yeah uh I if somebody out there doesn't listen to weather or news on the radio that's that's okay you may listen to AM Drive as you're driving into work those those Morning Show um that exist on stations out there um I'll call one group in particular because it's just a fact if you look it up but there's a company called Beasley they own a lot of radio stations this phenomenon is not exclusive to them but it's relevant to some of the things that they've um been putting press releases out on the past week or two they have announced the syndication of show their shows from one city to the next so you know the the Frank and James show uh homebased in Charlotte now available in Columbia Raleigh Charleston and Wilmington well yeah they're going to call that a win for that show this show is great we're expanding it to other cities yeah they laid off four other show to Syndicate one and and there's and that Frank and James show we're still just talking about things that are happening in Charlotte and Columbia we're not talking about what's happening in Raleigh because we're not there we don't know what's happening in Raleigh we don't know what's happening in those other cities yeah and that's what makes me sad that's what makes me sad um I can tell you one thing a lot of people have heard of John Boy and Billy and they're great they're funny but they're nothing like they were back when they were on what what used to be called WBC y 1079 it's now WBT FM I guess those guys 1079 yeah uh yeah they they're mix 1079 is their you know branding I don't remember what the call letters are but yeah for a while they were btfm and then then they but but a long time ago they were WBC Y and that's where John Boy and Billy was and they were freaking hilarious it's because of how good they were on on that station that they got to be syndicated yeah that and the stations they appeared on later yeah to be clear if somebody's doing a really good job and they get syndicated and picked up I'm happy for them absolutely that is a marker of success and absolutely I don't know I'm just really still bummed out about it I actually it's a shame that you can't have both that you can't have both right you know John Boy Billy type phenomenons and uh uh oh what was her her name that played the sappy music all the time and and and love songs and and Delilah that's right Delilah you can't have Delila and John Boy and Billy and some of these other uh syndicated talents while also on another station you know having a guy reporting local news in in Sumpter South Carolina or Greensboro or you know Augusta or whatever whatever it may be um here I'm just going to um Frank you talked about not playing things to get in trouble but I'm going to play a few seconds of uh I just want to show this real fast um with a little sound underneath it but um there's such a thing is fair use you can get away with a few yeah yeah we're gonna we're gonna fair use a little of this I think here let me let me stop the background music we're live no no this is pre- prodded okay um so as WCBS went off last week I I I H I had to be there as one is as a radio listener and I think you may have done the same thing but here's the the the video that I put on Twitter I'm in my front yard listening to them on the am dial is that sound coming through I don't hear it do you hear that I hear static I'm Wayne and for fin time this is WCBS New York that's a stroke of midnight right there that was as they handed off from that was the end yes that was the end but again I'm picking it up over the air and in case of an emergency or something this is something you can still do with with a radio and again yeah if if something like Hugo to your earlier Point Frank where to happen here in the Carolinas again I'm probably not not going to turn to a New York station for the latest if I had another choice but keeping those local stations local preserves that access during an emergency right the key to the economics is keeping those stations of flat the other 364 days so um I was trying to think of a way to like swing this around on a happier note but I'm I'm really just bummed out about it me too uh you know I'm like you I was listening to that last hour of programming and uh using trying to use uh handheld radios at home to see if I could find 880 on on them and could not but uh but you had digital tuning that helped and that's what I ended up doing myself is going out to the car with a digital tuner and sticking that on 880 and I was able to get WCBS and uh if you go to my Twitter feed you can hear uh as broadcast as Maroney intended as I as I put it on there the last time the news is jingle was played on WCBS which is the best jingle of all time did you get the feels as they were playing all the old Jingles oh yeah yeah um I'm on your T even though I came long after new is had had long gone away you know I still knew of it and could could relate and was kind of feeling sad that you know not gonna be not gonna ever hear this on a radio station ever again probably yeah I wasn't gonna call you out because newes is one of their older ones and I I didn't remember it but um I really got the feels when we got to the 90s and the 2000s Jingles because that's what's ingrained in my brain right those old Sounders yeah um so here's here's here's what you heard in Columbia everyone remembers and loves news is from the guy who composed so many great them we'll start with the real big one yeah he was the guy behind I love New York when you say Budweiser you've said it all sooner or later you'll own generals TR the mightest touch and have you ever heard the jingles Nationwide is on your side and here's what my friend Steve Carman did for us [Music] there it is I like how you turned it up in the video a little [Music] [Music] louder I can't help but notice Frank that as you're sitting in your car radio in South Carolina listening to this far off AM signal your radio is advertising that it comes with serus XM and Bluetooth but you are on the most as you put it marconian of connections correct and I still play the amdx game at night sometimes oh it's F the other night I was driving home from Greenville and was just flipping around the dial to see what would pop up and uh listening to uh you know like the best one probably for long long distance listening is probably 770 WABC uh which they still they still call it 77 WABC up there uh because they're they're not only are they have probably the perfect transmitter location not only do they have a 50,000 watt signal they're relatively low on the dial and the lower on the dial you are the the better your your frequency carries and and better it bounces off the ionosphere so uh being at 770 they're perfect for that people can hear them in Hawaii at night sometimes and over Europe sometimes I know in Cincinnati right yeah Cincinnati 700 right yeah um 780 WBBM and Chicago too in case our our tie in to WCBS is uh death and weather wasn't enough of a peg for you as these two guys over here are geeking about weather and and radio uh dxing as Frank called it if you're not familiar with it is is this process of tuning in these far off signals bouncing off the atmosphere and there's a lot of Science and a lot of that plays into that because it's got to be just right in order to make that connection right and as a matter of fact a lot of people don't know this but there are times when the sun's acting up and it causes the ionosphere to act up and am signals don't travel as well but sometimes you can get FM signals do the same thing that am signals do and it can happen at any time of day and I've experienced this before uh driving along and just flipping through the and I'm in unfamiliar country and I'm flipping through the FM dial and then once I like there's this station at like 105 something in Portland Maine that I'm getting in Southern Virginia how is this possible it's a fun it's a fun little because of this phenomenon called ducting that happens sometimes when the sun's acting up and this was in the middle of the day was didn't have to be at night and that happens with TV signals as well uh you can sometimes pick up TV stations and in South America here in the United States uh or well you could that's changed since the digital transition but back taking some of the fun away right right and that's that's also the case with the um with radio as well when HD radio came along uh because am signals don't propagate quite as well uh when they're also broadcasting that digital uh HD radio signal on the same frequency uh that I I experienced that with um um WBZ in Boston uh sometimes I used to be able to get them well to the South and now I can't anymore because they're they have that HD signal as well on the other hand I could pick them up in HD radio and State College sometimes listen to myself in CD quality as I'm driving home up there in State College there's a sentence not many people have muted listening to myself and CD quality right but yeah it's true that's one of the f one of the most fun things that that I got to do leaving acuweather at at 11:45 p.m. and then going out and flipping over to WBT and listening to a feed that I had recorded two hours ago uh being played or or listening to myself don't tell anybody you recorded it two hours ago it was live was definitely live uh I've stolen a picture off the Internet that shows a little bit how of these signals can bounce off the and come back right and let's let's be clearer about that that radio signal bounces off the ionosphere but only am and shortwave do that shortwave signals are even better than am about bouncing around they'll they'll bounce over the whole world uh off the ionosphere sometimes but uh am signals they they don't they don't bounce as well we say bounce it's actually a a bending that happens um and all radio signals do it including weather radar for example it's one of the things you have to have to get used to that in certain conditions like a like a temperature inversion uh where the radar signals can get bent back down toward the ground it's called anomalous propagation and uh that's that's how you get false returns sometimes and and the same thing happens with with radio uh signals as well FM and AM they you can sometimes pick them up a long way away much further than you think you would be able to and then other times you can barely get them 20 miles away it depends on what the weather's doing sometimes Str and also the way what the sun's doing too yeah that darn Sun uh Jamie watching on YouTube the big 870 WWL out of New Orleans as another good example uh if you're a sports fan this is the best thing for you to get these far off games that not might not be available in your region um because you know 880 out of New York still carries New York Mets gam so if you don't want to pay the MLB for the live stream you can tune in your Mets and see how badly they're losing tonight it could be worse you could be a white socks fan oh gonna bring down the mood even more um well Frank it's been fun talking weather with you and I hopefully our audience found it interesting I acknowledge that we went kind of off topic by going straight into a New York thing but we tried to hopefully make it relatable uh and maybe it's something you've encountered or something you've experienced with a station near you but I am going to digress for one more minute if I may growing up in New York I do have another weather tie-in that also hurts my heart a lot but uh the New York Region uh New York Connecticut New Jersey got inundated with flooding about a week two weeks ago my hometown got nine and half inches of rain in something like three hours that will absolutely insane amount of rain um Frank you mentioned earlier in this broadcast Hurricane Sandy which by all means is still a topof a record book uh storm especially for folks like in low Manhattan where the flooding was really bad um out on Long Island I was no longer living there at the time but my parents were they said Sandy brought down a lot of trees lot of power outages they didn't have power for days something in talking with friends and relatives that this flooding earlier this month did to Long Island and some other areas that maybe Sandy didn't was it brought so much rain that it toppled and destroyed these small little dams that held up duck ponds other water retention areas and this is video that my high school chemistry teacher shot this was a small little pond with a small little tributary coming out of it and that's the result if you're watching With Us online of what happened with the dam the dam was right there that was a road on top of what is a dam or it really looked like a hill right it wasn't like a damn like a Hoover Dam but it it held back this Pond this duck pond which just flowed right on out to the Long Island Sound because it got so much rain in such a short period of time that it just could not hold it back it happened to this pond in Stony Brook it happened to another Lake in Smithtown that for instance talking my father who I won't reveal his age but in his Decades of Life he's like I've never ever seen anything like this Sandy was bad and I'm not saying that this was worse than Sandy but in terms of the inundation of localized flash flooding in some of these places I think they this might have it beat but like I just I can't even fathom how much rain must have been falling I got these pictures if I can get my Facebook page up here from a friend this is my hometown Library if you're watching again with us online right now this is the basement of the Smithtown Main Branch library that flooded the basement flooded because obviously all that water came in and went down but this is where the archives oh that stinks a lot a lot of loss there a lot of a lot of Priceless documents um I think they called it the Long Island room I can remember having to do school reports and going there and going through old maps and old documents I'm told they're going to try to restore some of them there are companies out there who do salvaging of water damaged things but I can't imagine it's going to be perfect um not to mention other items that were also stored down there and in other parts the buildings uh you know we've seen similar pictures on the news of schools that were damaged churches that were damaged buildings that were damaged and the thing that is just remarkable about this Frank is it wasn't a named storm it's not like it was a Sandy 2.0 it was a cold front that came through that just had excessive training storms uh and they're going to be cleaning this up for years so um I did want to just mention that uh there is a website where you can go donate to um the recovery efforts here specifically of the uh Smithtown Library uh there are other fundraisers obviously for other initiatives we'll go ahead and put this QR code on the screen um but you know this the Smith town library is going to have to buy new equipment uh to replace uh some of the things that were damaged and also do some of these restoration efforts so that's just one of many fundraisers that's happening right now I realize this is a far off Land from the Carolinas uh my hometown in in New York but these these pictures they're just unbelievable and and it's again not a problem that is unique to this area this just could easily have been us or somebody else Frank right you never can tell I mean we've had these uh these kind of events happen here in the Carolinas I mean it happened near my parents once when they had about 10 inches of rain in in four hours yeah and a creek that was near them actually one Creek either side of them uh caused uh uh went went into flood well out of their Banks a bridge got washed out of the neighborhood uh 100 yards down the road from them on in one way and then 3 of a mile the other way down the road uh the road was washed out uh you could still drive on the the bare Earth underneath but the road was washed out but you didn't want to do that unless you had to uh so they were essentially stranded at home for a few days and until the the road could be repaired and it took even longer to replace that bridge so th this this kind of thing can happen anywhere uh these uh extreme rain events H that happen in a short period of time and you know over that small area where they do happen yeah it can be worse than a Sandy or or worse than a Hugo uh like take for example the um that uh big storm back on the April 20th that hit Rock Hill yeah you know in a small area it was worse than Hugo but only in a small area of course Hugo did that all over North and South Carolina but 35 years ago right 35 years ago coming up on the 21st of September that's right yeah we're coming up quickly on that anniversary we will uh be replaying our Hurricane Hugo special once we get into uh September here moving towards the peak of the hurricane season um so that was a lot I think all of that was a lot tonight but um important topics nonetheless and I hope I hope relatable in some form or fashion uh to our audience across the Carolinas and and Beyond I do have a happy note to end on Frank which is that I want everyone want to mark their calendars to come see us on Saturday October 5th at 10:00 a.m. to 2m at the Greenville sparenberg Airport in Greer we're gonna be there for the upstate weatherfest that's Saturday October 5th right so maybe another dual hat situation for me where I'm uh yeah representing both the Carolina weather group and the South Carolina State climate office because we're planning to be there uh the climate office and the Carolina weather group's going to be there too is unless there's a hurricane coming you know caveat which we can just hope there's not I hope there's not better not be but there'll be uh there'll be uh some other broadcast Partners there emergency Partners National Weather servic is located there um so we hope you can come out and see us we'll have our green screen uh that you can try if you want to try that i' say come sooner rather than later because I'm told there's no power in the parking lot so uh once my generator's dead my generator's dead so if you want to try our green screen like Frank has behind him come sooner rather than later on Saturday October right before the battery runs out before the battery runs out before we move on from radio and such there's one other thing that I wanted to mention uh folks a lot of people don't even know anymore because am radio's fallen into such disuse and and it's uh almost atrophied at this point because even the am stadiums stations have simal cast on FM most of them do anymore but AM radio is still a thing and it is still valuable and I don't know about not everybody may get into this but I do enjoy this dxing thing where I can just sit down with my AM radio uh while I'm driving in the car of course you got to pay attention to the road but you can you know hit the button while you're driving down the road uh and keep your eye on the road and glance over at the frequency you're on every now and then but um it's kind of fun to see what what you can pick up you know you I can get stations in New York get 880 here in Columbia South Carolina uh good you can listen to PN talk now well yeah yeah if I would to listen to that there's a local ESPN station I can listen to see that's why not better that's why yeah and you know many see earlier point you know they got rid of they got rid of the news station because there were two of them but how many sports talk stations are there in New York now oh I think of WFAN 660 yeah 660 you can listen to that here because they have a Clear Channel signal and it's on 660 so it should propagate pretty well down here it's pretty easy to remember 660 770 880 right I think they did that on purpose um I think so but uh and it's not just that you know there are other stations too mentioned uh Cincinnati and you know the I've picked up de Mo Iowa whu wh who they actually use an owl in their logo um and they're 10 something what are they 10 1040 um one one station in Iowa that or actually in Omaha that you cannot pick up is 1110 in Omaha because their signal is the one that WBT has to protect so you pick up WBT here but if you go the other side of the appalachin mountains you get uh what are they kfb I think or something like that anyway but they're on 11:10 out of Omaha um I mentioned uh Nashville's country Legend 650 a.m. WSM you can get them here in the Carolinas um so you know have some fun go out one night with your good quality uh radio handheld or your car radio and yeah you ought to have one because they will come in handy in emergencies like Hurricane Hugo for example if we get another major hurricane in the Carolinas not only are some radio transmitters going to be knocked out I'm some TV transmitters going to be knocked out some cell phone tow is going to be knocked out and you might not have power to run your cable modem and your cell phone isn't working because the tow near you or knocked out and so what are you going to do that's what you're going to do radio potentially to an A has a hand crank can always charg and actually the back panel is Sol and you can plug your phone into it to char your phone there you go see and and that's an important um emergency preparedness tool to have is a radio just like the one James has there be hungry CU I don't have enough food on hand but I will have music and so that if you're a prepper you should have one of those for sure one of yeah you know what the other thing is that I like too um and this is fun too is is don't forget about kind of the low power FM stations the community stations that are on the lower end of the dial so like where I am in Charlotte I can pick up 90.3 wbk which is like oldies and Beach Music out of Richburg South Carolina it's commercial free you know they have their local Hometown sponsors I swear the funeral home I think is one of them and that really just sticks out of my brain um but you know you can really enjoy and there is even some of these AM stations too where if you're as you're scanning not only you're gonna get these Clear Channel stations that that Frank and I are talking about but you might stumble across a local College radio station or a local community station playing oldies that you just didn't know was there yeah and those College stations are kind of neat too like like for example here in Columbia W USC uh I think they're at .7 and they they have a let's let's call it an Eclectic mix sure sure let's call it that the music some weird stuff for sure but then again I hear James Brown on there too and I love that so my College radio station was wuog 90.5 FM Athens Georgia and we had a lot of power like they still have a lot of power I'm going to look it up here in a second but in terms of eclectic I remember my lead in the show that was on before my show one night was an hourl an hour of wolf howling sounds and I was just like what is happened I was hoping you were going to say an hour of Wolfman Jack recordings no no it was an hour of wolf howling sounds beaming out at 26,000 Watts on the FM dial like you could pick it up in the North Carolina Mountains from from Athens Georgia um right that's a that's a those are stories for another day yeah speaking of FM stations in in North Carolina there's uh 106 nine because they're transmitters on top of Mount Mitchell and you can pick them up for a long long way FM is a line of sight thing but if you put the trans better up at a on a 6600 foot uh mountain peak uh that means your signal is going to go a long long long way and there was a time when they were still grandfathered in and were able to transmit it over 100,000 Watts I think it was 250,000 Watts at one point so you would get a you could be able to hear them like almost all over the Carolinas back in in the day they that but think they had knock it down to 100,000 Watts eventually I'm on the Fring of wncw from uh isal Community College up there in the mountains but again I think the elevation helps it and they also have some repeaters and things too but um yeah there's some Frank and I are gonna launch a sister podcast where we just talked about R yeah we should do do a radio commentary podcast yeah um I think that does it for this week of the car in weather group cuz frak and I could keep going but um that needs to be it for the radio talk we do we need to actually talk about weather maybe oh my God we for the last in the last five minutes um the holiday weekend is going to be hot and rainy false fall is gonna step aside and it's it's already gotten hot today we're back to second summer already it was 97 I think in Columbia today yeah with heat index we were talking about heat indexes again I was like yeah the heat index was over 100 here what what was the high here in col I have to look it up now because I I did not look up to see what it was it was 96 at least Noe 97 97 was the high here yeah yeah but uh we are talking about some rain this weekend across the Carolina not wash out conditions but rain maybe a few thunderstorms so if you're travel for the holiday weekend we're going back to popup afternoon thunderstorms uh as we go into this weekend the cold front moves in from the Northwest again concern there however might come up next week is that front become stationary over us for a while and upper level disturbances right along it so as we go into September we might actually be in a fairly wet weather pattern and might get another intrusion of cool air next week as well uh except that it'll be cloudy and drippy during that time and it'll feel like like or something be yeah yeah okay so earlier in the episode you told me you you couldn't do your WCBS uh uh you know phrasing for for legal reasons can probably not a good idea can you do a hypothetical one can you just make up a can you give the holiday weekend forecast as if you're on the radio oh okay well I guess I can try and throw something together here yeah yeah I want to give you I'll give you a minute I'll give you a minute being put on the spot there oh let's let's see what are the highs looking like here I yeah while you compile thatd forecast here I'll uh I'll thank our patreon supporters for helping make this in every episode of the Carolina weather group possible join us at patreon.com/crashcourse uh what we do you can also scan that QR code that's on the screen right now if you want to uh spend your money maybe buying something physical and tangible you can buy a hat or a t-shirt or something of that like was that enough stalling For You Frank yeah I think so do I need to give a traffic report first would that make it feel more homey for you no I think I can get by here okay do you want me to wrap you like intensively like after okay all right here we go three 2 1 well folks we have another day of intense heat and humidity coming up for your Thursday as we see another mainly sunny day and temperatures shooting up well in the 90s in fact don't be surprised if you see Triple digits showing up in uh places like Raleigh and fville where uh the Mercury will be soaring into the upper 90s and again maybe into into triple digit territory places like Columbia topping out around 96 the upstate of South Carolina hot as well as long as well as the coastal plain areas of our two states but uh if you want to cool off you can go to the coast where we'll see temperatures holding in the 80s and the mountains as well where it will depend on your elevation but it can be as cool as the 70s depending on how high up you are after that we see temperatures start to Trend downward as upper level Ridge breaks down and the cold front starts to approach from the north and west don't be surprised if you actually see a popup thunderstorm or two uh around in the mountains uh for your Saturday or for your Friday rather uh with highs again mainly in the 90s but some 80s in the mountains and along our Coast Outer Banks even cooler maybe even only low to bid 80s there and of course some 70s showing up in the mountains as we go toward the weekend that's when our next cold front finally pushes in and we see those afternoon thunderstorms become more widespread and potentially locally heavy and Gusty as well so be on the lookout for some of those stronger storms around and be ready to move indoors our high temperatures Trend downward to the high 80s and low 90s for the most part but again uh cooler at the mountains and on the beaches that front becomes stationary into the first part of next week so look for uh the unsettled conditions to continue and also cooler air starts to push in from the North in a uh more cool season type of pattern we one of those cold air damning situations look to get underway and that's going to result in yet another false fall situation with temperatures holding uh to the uh 80s and even 70s even outside the mountains uh we'll see temperatures holding in the 70s for a lot of the Carolinas but much of South Carolina is still at least getting to 80 or 82 degrees that's it from the Carolina weather group weather center I'm meteorologist Frank Strait Carolina weather group news time 109 Q cars for kids 877 cars for kids K RS cars for kids that one hasn't changed in no it hasn't I wish it would go away and now I'm going to have to get in touch with uh one of my former AI weather colleagues Danielle n who now was a National Weather Service meteorologist up in New York because that that jingle used to drive her nuts and I'm gonna say oh guess what came up on my podcast they played it in the last hour on Sunday night and I was like this hour would not be complete without a cars or kid spot right right oh well Frank uh that was fun I actually do feel better now I don't know if our audience enjoyed as much as we did but we had a good time didn't we James I we did we did I hope I hope the audience got something out of it we'll be back uh next most of our audience is probably saying we don't care about what's going on up north radio here too I want to protect all radio um that's the thing you see something like this uh uh one of these Heritage type stations in in a Major Market can can disappear it can happen here too it can happen anywhere so it really could um barring any uh severe weather maybe we take a little break next week for the Labor Day weekend but if not we're back every Wednesday with a new addition the Carolina weather group talking weather science technology and more from the Carolinas and Beyond uh and we appreciate you uh putting up with us this week and hope to see you back here again real soon and uh Frank until then be well and we'll talk to everyone soon byebye see you around y'all a [Music]