Yesterday, I got to tour Bay News 9 with Chief Meteorologist Mike Clay! It was really cool actually getting to see what goes on behind the scenes.
I also got to meet Josh Linker, another Bay News 9 meteorologist. It was amazing getting to watch a few live weather reports, and getting to see and talk to them for a few hours was cool.
Also while I was there, there was some nasty severe weather going on in Alabama/Georgia, which I'll be getting to later, but it was fun to track the storms with them between "Weather On The Nines", because I got some input/feedback on the storms that I normally wouldn't get by just watching it by myself on radar.
Something else I found out is that the NWS has a chatroom set up so they can communicate about any severe weather reports or events that occur, but unforunately only the NWS, media, and emergency management have access (NOT FAIR).
Now, moving on.
The storms were spread out all over the area, but there was one storm in particular, just southeast of Atlanta, that really stood out. We used a radar product called GR2Analyst, which is one of the best commercial radar products out right now, to track the storms, and before I saw it in person, I didn't know what to expect, because I've heard different things about it from people and reviews but getting to use it was cool, as it is easy to use. So, anyway, I'll start with the storm to the southwest of Atlanta. We started to watch it around 5:00, when it was just starting to get severe, and by about 5:45, it was approaching just southwest of Atlanta, we saw on the NWSChat system that one of the local forecasters had said he saw a hail spike on the radar that was the largest he'd ever seen, and as it turned out when we checked that report, it was 4.53 inches!
More about GR2Analyst
There are radar images of the storm and total storm reports below:
(Each image links to a larger picture)
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