HD Weather Gets Better!

You may start noticing some of our weather maps have a blue "SkyTracker7 LIVE CONTROL" panel on the top right of your screen. This allows Robin, Brent, Leo and I to have tools available to us on the screen - just by touching them. We can zoom in on an area, show the direction a storm is moving, draw on the screen and much, much more - all live! We call this feature "hand tracking." It's actually something that we've been able to do for years - but now it's much more refined. In the old days, we had a clicker attached to a cord we had to use in order to hand track. It was more like jump roping instead of hand tracking. Now, Robin has bought us the Cadillac of all wireless remote controls from our weather vendor, WSI. It's a great piece of equipment, and I figured this past weekend I should give it a test drive. Above, you can see me doing a "box zoom" on the Charlottesville area. I was zooming in on that part of the state to show how clear the skies were, while southwestern Virginia was clouding up. Our new clicker has eight buttons on it, so our fingers are busy selecting tools from the on-screen LIVE CONTROL panel, changing sources, advancing maps and more. Not only that, but our new toy can also change our weather graphics from out on the SkyTracker7 Weather Deck. This thing has a heck of a range, and in a pinch, could be used as a paperweight. Just thought you would be interested in our newest toy. It's another thing in our weather arsenal!

Quickly, one more note.

I got a call after News 7 at Six this Sunday from a very interesting viewer. His name is Ed. Ed is a retired Trooper with the Virginia State Police. He had heard me mention last week during one of my weathercasts the 39th anniversary of Hurricane Camille making landfall in Mississippi. Ed was a young Trooper in 1969, when the remnants of Camille slammed into Nelson County. To say I've always had an interest in "Camille" is an understatement, but I've never met or talked to anyone who lived through the flooding in Nelson County or worked the scene afterwards. Ed is my new best friend! He instantly had me hooked with his stories, and he's promised to send me tons of information on the Nelson County event he's compiled. I can't wait to go through it all. If it turns out to be as good as I think, I'll post something on this blog soon.

Keep havin' a great week friends! --Jay