Oh wow - this is a fun thread! Before the internet - it was not that long ago!! Can you imagine where we will go in the next 10-20 years? Just look back at the last 10-20 years. It is quite amazing.
I can remember waking up each morning to watch A.M. Weather. I am fairly certain I was up before anyone else in the family. I would sit there in the basement of our house on the family farm here in Massac County, Illinois - black and white television set. It was no bigger than a 13" screen. I tweeked the little antenna on the back (believe some aluminum foil was involved) and there it was - A.M. Weather!!!! I was in awe at the maps - the looping daily forecast map - then at the end they would show the Severe Weather Outlook. I can remember watching them point to the slight, moderate, and high risk (believe those were the three identifies back then). I would also be excited if I saw that we were going to be in a risk.
If it was a BIG event then I would stay home - cough cough - sick from school!
Next up to bat would be Willard Scott on NBC. I would tell my grandmother that I needed just 5 more minutes before we would leave for school (she worked there and would drive me). We normally left around 7:30. But - I would stretch it out as much as I could.
By eight grade I had my own weather radio. I carried it to school with me - I was the only kid that was allowed to have a radio. Since it was a weather radio - they figured it could do no harm. On a stormy day I would turn it down very low and try to listen to it inside my desk (the kind with the lift lid).
During recess and physical education I would take the weather radio with me - would climb the bleaches to the top and press it against the window. Once we had a tornado watch - wow I was excited. Since I knew so much about weather they let me go to the Kindergarten class and teach them tornado safety rules. I suppose I scared the kids to death - lol. To top it off
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they put the kindergarten kids in a small trailer out back.
Then when I hit high school I was able to go into the office where they had ACTUALLY cable (I only received four channels at my house on the farm). I would go into the office during lunch and they would let me watch The Weather Channel. Now keep in mind - this is back in the day when The Weather Channel did weather.
I was in heaven! The physical education teacher would have been post my hand drawn weather maps and forecast up on the gym wall. I had a little Commodore Computer back then with a crude printer. We didn't have internet - but at least I could draw things on a map.
THEN Chris Novy came along - I believe I first met him at the NWS Office in Paducah, KY. At that time they were in a small trailer by the airport tower. When the wind would blow their roof would ripple and make noises.
I would marvel at all of the facsimile paper weather maps - occasionally they would be hand drawing severe weather watches on a plastic sheet with a map underneath of it. Behind a few more desks were weather instruments. Then in the back room was the radar! The kind of radar with the green screen and a sweep. You could watch the echoes light up and then fade away with each sweep.
Once while I was at the office one of the meteorologists let me spin the little wheel to look up into the storm. He was showing me how hail was coming out the top of a storm. I am pretty sure at that moment I had "arrived" as far as my weather geekness level. Or so I thought.
Until Chris Novy introduced me to this coming out of Carbondale, Illinois. The radio system would send a signal to a repeated and you could hear a whistling noise when listening to a special scanner. If you could get the signal to come in clear enough then you could receive all of the text data from the NWS Office in Chicago. At that time Chicago did the forecast for southern Illinois.
Eventually Chris got it working - but this was not until after I duct taped two rusty old wheelbarrows together and attached a 30 foot pole to them. On the top of that was a little antenna that Chris had someone else pick up for me.
I nailed the pole to the house - connecting the 2 rusty wheel barrows together. It was wobbly but it worked!
It wasn't long until I was picking up the whistling noise on the radio. I then hooked that up to a received and bought huge roles of printer paper. The kind printer paper you would find in a news station - endless streams of paper. A little teletype printer machine would go back and forth with text - it made the loudest noise. But - I would get the forecast and watches and warnings. On a busy day it would be an hour behind!
My mother was NOT impressed with these amazing feats. Especially the time I installed a 20+ horizontal antenna on the house (by her bedroom window). One night during an ice storm that antenna slowly started tilting - around 2 am it slammed into her window. So, that was the end of that. I moved it to the pony barn room - which was about 250 feet away.
If I needed radar then I would have to drive 30 minutes over to Paducah and look at the radar screen at their office or the flight severe station. I don't know how many trips we made over there - my grandmother would drive me. She never got tired of me talking about the weather - or at least she never told me she did!
When out chasing I would just watch the thunderstorms explode from my hill here in Massac County - Chris taught me about the low level jet. He was even able to whistle into his hand held emergency management radio and make my weather radio siren go off.
Ironically I am back up here now - bought the farm back and built my house. Now we have REAL towers - several! Real weather instruments - and all the computer information one could ever want, need, or request.
Now the NWS occasionally is asking me for a color table for their radar.
We have come a long long way - I don't think those who have always had internet will ever appreciate what all of us went through - back in the day!
Did I mention I received StormTrack in the mail every few months? Hand drawn images and cartoons. lol Great memories.