Weather Forecasts

First I admit that I have a friend who is a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Indianapolis (who listens to QMIX regularly-thnx Chad!), but that in no way influences my opinion.
As much as I love radio, weather has always been a close second as an interest in my life. I guess it started back on Palm Sunday 1965 when I was just a youngster (more info). Hey… I was out with my camcorder lookin’ for tornadoes years before the Bill Paxton/Helen Hunt movie (I’ve only bagged two in my entire life and one was in Dallas). Plus, I watched the weather channel 24/7 from the day they signed on until it became the Jim Cantore and commercial channel… but I digress.
My point is.. the National Weather Service has had a rough time of it this winter. They have missed the boat on nearly every major winter storm since Christmas (issuing Winter Storm Warnings with nothing of significance developing). But yesterday, our Ops Mrg, Dave Wineland walked into the studio at 2:05 PM and said, “you gotta hand it to the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast. They said we would get sprinkles by 2PM and at exactly 2PM we started getting sprinkles”.
Dave was right on the money… as is the NWS forecast most of the time.
For a long time, our competition got their forecast from the Weather Channel, while QMIX and KORN always used the NWS forecast. As a matter of pride, I compared the NWS forecast with the forecast issued by the Weather Channel, and when they significantly differed, the NWS forecast was more accurate 99.999999% of the time (actually it was 100%). Every time for over two years. That’s incredible!
Forecasting in the winter has always been difficult, everybody wants to know when the snow will start, when it will stop and how much will fall. Not to mention that just 2 or 3 degrees can make a huge difference between rain, freezing rain or snow.  In the summer time, all it takes is, “a chance for afternoon thundershowers” to satisfy everyone. Nobody wants to know exactly how much rain will fall.
For the record… the Weather Channel didn’t do any better this winter. Nor did AccuWeather or anyone else.
It looks like winter may be sliding away, and now it’s raining. And it started at exactly 2PM Monday.

My First Blog

I finally mastered the technique of posting here.. which is kind of bad because I’m supposed to be the QMIX tech guy.
There was a time when I hand-coded the entire QMIX dot COM website using a text editor, and uploaded it using an FTP client… in the days before Front Page, Hot Dog or Dreamweaver, and now it takes me 4 days to figure out how to post here.
I was originally going to open my blog by complaining… first about how long and dreary this winter has been, then I was going to rant about how Hoosiers (the residents of Indiana, not the IU basketball and football teams) sit by while our legislators pass new laws and taxes, and then complain when they become law (things like the seat-belt law and increase in sales tax are pet peeves of mine), but I really want to keep things positive here, so I won’t utter another complaint, except to say “don’t cruise in the fast lane” (I could go nuts about my #1 pet peeve but that would really make people mad).
Instead I shall focus on the positive and say that from the time I was a little kid, all I ever wanted to do was to be on the radio, and it is a blessing to be able to do what I do and get paid for it!  I once heard that if you find something you really like to do and make it your job, you never have to go to work!   That is my scenario.  Every day I get to play music on the radio and spend the rest of my day playing with all of those wonderful toys (computers, transmitters, microphones etc).
It will be 17 years this fall since I walked through the door of QMIX and started the fun… here’s to another 17 years!
Now… about driving while talking on the cell phone…..