Anyone who has worked in a newsroom with this former news director is probably familiar with what I typically say during any discussion about what leads a newscast whenever the weather is a significant story. Even my family likes to recite it to me, because I have said it so many times over the years.

“Weather always wins.”

That has been true since the 1960s, when I can remember watching my hometown weatherman, Charlie Hall on WCSC-TV in Charleston, SC. Charlie delivered the weather using what was the very latest technology– a magic marker, which he used to write backwards on clear plexiglass maps that he stood behind, facing the camera. It was very slick for the time, especially in the eyes of an eight-year-old. When Charlie came on the air, folks stopped what they were doing to watch. Given Charleston’s location on the coast, whenever a hurricane was threatening, Charlie could dramatically pick up a two-way radio microphone and deliver an “official” bulletin to local first responders. So beloved in the community was Charlie Hall, they would name the street for him where the station’s new studios opened, just months after his passing in 1997.

Other weather segments on local tv at the time might feature a weatherman in the uniform of an oil company (Sohio, Standard, Atlantic, and Esso–just to name a few.) Yes, there were a few women who would present the forecast, but unfortunately most were unfairly dismissed as “weather girls” no matter how professional they might be in the role. There were also the whimsical character weather types, along the lines of one example, know as “Captain Scotty,” who would pull the written forecast out of a puppet-like clam.

Of course, that all changed in the 1970s when television stations became serious about weather science and hired actual meteorologists to deliver the weather. For example, in 1975, KSTP-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul would bump popular Barry ZeVan, “the weather man,” to make way for Dr. Walt Lyons, a degreed meteorologist. The station would, as many did at the time, build out a team of meteorologists and equip them with their own weather radar and computer graphics to present the weather in as high-tech and credible a fashion as possible. A personal note here–I would arrive as KSTP’s News Director in 2019, just before Dave Dahl, the last member of that original team of meteorologists, would retire as the station’s Chief Meteorologist–after 43 years on the air.

In some markets around the country, what would become best known as “The Weather Wars” became a technology-fueleded “arms race” with bigger and bigger station-owned Doppler Radars with whizbang features like “dual-polarity” and “klystron” in their names. Then came tornado-chasing helicopters in the air and storm tracker vehicles on the ground. Virtual Reality weather graphics are becoming the latest rage, powered by the same computer engines used by video game creators. They turned the staple “green screen” chroma key-based effect into the modern-day equivalent of those plexiglass maps from years gone by.

In fact, weather is so important to local television newscasts that it is now the first or second thing presented in every newscast. Your town probably has a few of the weather brand names in current use across the local television channels, like “First Alert,” “Next Weather,” “Storm Team,” “Weather Authority,” or the head scratching “Weather Impact” brand now adopted by most Tegna-owned outlets.

Proving that a good branding opportunity should never be wasted over just calling it “the weather.”

In recent years, local television weather departments have been pushed into the latest trend of promoting or hyping (depending on your opinion) specific weather events in the forecast with “Alert Days.” The idea of highlighting specific days that weather will be more than just inconvenient but could actually impact people’s day-to-day lives. The practice has already spun a bit out of control with some stations now featuring “Possible Alert Days” along with even half-days being given alert status.

To be fair, real severe weather events are where local television stations can be at their absolute best. From tornadoes in the Plains to Hurricanes on the Gulf and East coasts. Or during Blizzards in the Northern states to the Droughts out West. Major events in our climate, whether or not you may believe it is changing, impact everyone and it is when stations can save lives and truly help in the aftermath.

For some stations, there is trouble on the horizon that you don’t need a million watt super doppler to see. A small but slowly growing number of stations are “outsourcing” their weather coverage to sister stations, hundreds of miles away. Or in the case of the Allen Media stations, there were plans to shift some local weather coverage to be done remotely from co-owned The Weather Channel, in Atlanta. Those plans were paused when public backlash developed in some markets, but don’t be surprised when it is implemented in the future. The argument is that it makes business sense, and that is probably true in a spreadsheet.

But if Weather Always Wins, and let’s just say that I certainly believe it does, why on earth would you ever give that local advantage up, even just to save some money?

As Charlie Hall would say about a pop-up shower: “Even on a clear day, you might not see it…until you’re all wet.”