If you visited the homepage of KWTX.com sometime Tuesday evening, late Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning, you hopefully saw (and clicked on) the link to our live online weather coverage. It's a completely new concept - even while we're not providing continuous coverage on News 10, we're giving you a "behind the scenes" look at the work we're doing in the Doppler 10 Forecast Center. You can hear us discussing and analyzing the storms, assessing their strength and their severe weather potential, and talking about where they're headed next.  Sometimes the discussions got fairly technical - again, it's a "behind the scenes" look, which is somewhat different than the standard coverage we would bring you on News 10. It's a chance to go beyond what you see on the air, and if you're a weather geek like me, it gives you an opportunity to see what goes on in the Doppler 10 Forecast Center during a severe weather event.

When the concept was first introduced a few weeks ago, I wasn't sure how well it would work.  But after this first "trial" run, I have to say I really like it! We don't like continuously interrupting programming on News 10 (unless we have a potentially deadly severe or tornadic storm).  Streaming live coverage online gives us a way to keep you, our viewers, updated on the weather situation - if you want. And if you want to watch your favorite News 10 shows you can still do that, knowing that we'll still provide Storm Alerts on the air to keep you updated when necessary.

We did get some positive email feedback from viewers who were watching last night, but we could always use more. What did you think about our online coverage? What worked? What didn't? What would you like to see more/less of? Like I said, this is our first time ever doing this (but probably not the last), and we want to bring you the best coverage we can.

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Some other, random thoughts from rounds 2 (Tuesday evening) and 3 (Wednesday morning) of the mid-week severe weather event:

* I'm really, really tired. I woke up at 8 am Tuesday morning, tried to go back to sleep, got up around 10, took a brief nap in the late afternoon, got to the station at 9 pm Tuesday, and didn't leave until 9 am Wednesday morning. Like I said... I'm tired (and sure hoping we can avoid round 4 Wednesday night)!

* Both rounds 2 & 3 were incredibly electrically active (i.e. lots of lightning). ironically however, the storm that produced all the damage from Salado to Little River-Academy stopped producing as much lightning once it started becoming tornadic in Bell County. I've seen that before, but I don't know if there's a good reason for it (yes - I'm admitting I don't know).

* One benefit of the online coverage -- the storm that eventually produced a possible tornado started showing signs of rotation when it was still way down in Burnet County.  Brady and I were talking about the rotation in that storm some 45 minutes before a tornado warning was ever issued. I'm not trying to pump our egos or anything -- I'm just saying I think that's why the online coverage is so great.

* One problem with the online coverage -- it's doesn't work on Macs. The streaming video requires Windows Media Player 9 or better, and it's not Mac-compatible. We are hoping that we will eventually be able to stream in Flash (like the videos that play on the right side of the news, weather, and home pages), which does work on Macs, but there's no telling when that technology will be available to us. If you had any problems trying to play the live stream (and keep in mind - it is bandwidth-intensive, meaning it's going to work best on a Cable or DSL connection), check the troubleshooting page.

* Speaking of possible tornado, as you may have heard Brady or I mention, we likely won't know if the damage caused in Bell County was from straight line wind or a tornado until the National Weather Service surveys the damage. IF there was a tornado, they will rate the tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale based on its estimated wind speed, which is determined by the degree of damage that was caused.  From what I heard through the time I left the station this morning, most of the damage consisted of uprooted trees and partial home and structure damage. Based on the descriptions I've heard, that would put wind speeds within the storm in the 86-110 mph range, which is considered an EF1 (on a scale from EF0 to EF5). That's my guess... again, the NWS will have to conduct a complete damage survey to obtain an accurate wind speed estimate, if there was a tornado.

* It has been an incredibly active spring storm season, both here in Central Texas and across the rest of Tornado Alley.  Through May 11th (which includes the devastating weekend twisters in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Georgia), there have been 905 reported tornadoes in the U.S. so far this year. Compare that to the 10-year average... we are not that far away from exceeding the average number of tornadoes for the whole year. Yikes!

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Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't give a BIG shout-out to our production team for enabling us to provide this continuous online coverage. They are the people working behind the scenes of the "behind the scenes" coverage, and spent many long hours Tuesday night and Wednesday morning making sure things went off without a hitch. I'm going to single out one person in particular: Brian McKinney. He directed most of our online coverage through the overnight hours, and just listen to his schedule: he arrived at KWTX at 3 o'clock Tuesday afternoon, and was still there when I left at 9 o'clock Wednesday morning.  That's a 18+ hour workday! I think he went home briefly to freshen up in the middle of the long overnight shift, but still... kudos to him for hanging in there and enabling us to provide our extended online coverage. Thanks, Brian!