Where do I start? Well, the title of this post came to me this afternoon as I was walking from my car to the newsroom. The TV tower here is well over 1500 feet tall, and there's ALL KINDS of cool weather phenomena that happens up there. And of course, what goes up...must come down.
Today there were storms in the area, and I just can't describe how awesome it is to hear the SNAP,CRACKLE, AND POP of static electricity from up above. You hear it and just know that something's coming long before it hits.
It's also an event when ice forms on the tower and on the guy wires. That ice begins to fall as soon as it becomes warmer at that altitude. And it's a show--no kidding. Some of the pieces are 6 feet long...or more, and some of them scream down at incredible speeds. And some of them just float. Luckily, more of them float than scream. I did a fun little story about the ice that you can watch here. I used to work at KOKH here in OKC, and their tower was even closer to the building than ours. I have a reporter friend whose car was totaled by falling ice--you can probably find it on Youtube. That was pretty funny actually. Sad, but funny. She got a brand new car out of it.
And of course, when there's severe weather happening, it's all hands on deck. There's an adrenaline rush that comes over EVERYONE in the place. It's kind of hard to explain--while most folks are taking shelter (and rightly so), we're efforting actual live video of the storm--from the ground, from the air, etc. The mission becomes abundantly clear.
And it's a feeling that doesn't leave just because you're not there. Many times I have been on vacation when a storm has hit, and have felt totally useless. "If I just had my camera..."
I'll probably feel the same way long after I've grown up and gotten a real job.
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