Our listeners have always told us that the #1 thing they want from News/Talk WSB is current updates and warnings on severe weather.   Meteorologist Kirk Mellish gets on the air frequently when there’s a Tornado or Severe Thunderstorm Warning…with updates every 10 minutes or so.   But, short of Kirk staying on constantly to continue the coverage for a particular county, our listeners needed a way to know—as soon as they turned on WSB—that there was severe weather in the area.    That is what the Weather Alert Tone is all about.    The tone is meant to ‘alert’ a new  listener to stay for the next Stormcenter Update---because that storm could be bearing down on their home or office.

For instance, this morning in the 8am hour, a storm caused down trees and power lines, and damage in Rome and Bartow County.   If you were listening to News/Talk WSB in Fayette, Fulton, or Gwinnett County, you may have been annoyed by the Alert Tones and the ‘break-ins’ for special reports on warnings in Bartow County.    But, the listeners in Bartow County—many of whom were in transit—needed ‘word’ as soon as possible.

We all get upset when a TV station shrinks the screen to put weather warnings crawling along the bottom of the broadcast… but, typically NOT when the crawl at the bottom warns us about a damaging storm headed to our county.  Consider the Weather Alert Tone the radio analogy to the TV ‘crawl’.     It’s an alert for someone just joining Atlanta’s News, Weather and Traffic Station that there’s an active severe weather alert in our area, and to stay tuned for the complete details from The WSB Stormcenter.     It could be a needed warning to you and your family someday… depend on it…