An "Official" Missouri Highway Map, a projector and "Color" Weather Radar

Back before the Internet, and before TV stations made daily use of radar imagery, there were a few radio pioneers like Jerrel Shepherd in Moberly - who took aircraft radar and adapted it for use covering the weather on KRES and KWIX. The small circular green and white radar screen was used along with paper maps to plot thunderstorms as they moved across Missouri. The radar screen itself didn't have a map, only circles and compass headings. So storms on the radar screen were plotted onto maps to show their location in relation to communities and counties in central and northeast Missouri. At the time, even the National Weather Service was using this type of radar and plotting storms onto paper maps.

This made Moberly's weather coverage very unique at a time when even TV stations didn't have ready access to radar for use in tracking storms. As I recall, even radio and TV in St. Louis and Kansas City weren't using radar for live weather coverage during severe weather.

In 1978 the GM at KWWR-KXEO was Larry Weller. He had worked for Jerrel Shepherd in Moberly for about 12 years in the 60s and 70s. He wanted KWWR-KXEO to cover the weather like KRES-KWIX, but  radar wasn't in the budget - so that goal was nearly impossible. We tried, though. We'd monitor the Weather Wire closely for watches and warnings and get those on the air as soon as possible. Weller would be at home monitoring KRES and the local TV stations - and if we didn't have a watch or warning on the air as soon as somebody else - he was on the phone chewing somebody at the station out for being so slow.

Then in the early 80s a company called Enterprise Electronics in Enterprise Alabama developed a system that would allow radio and TV stations to access National Weather Service radar. In Mexico, we purchased an Enterprise system that allowed us to dial in to a coupler and access National Weather Service radar in Columbia, St. Louis and Kansas City. The system used an electronic map overlay and real time radar data in color - different colors for different storm intensities - much like the radar we're used to seeing on TV and the Internet these days.

The Enterprise system was expensive - somewhere around $18,000. But we secured an exclusive color radar sponsor and that covered most of the cost of the Enterprise System. I believe the first radar sponsor was First National Bank in 1981. The following year the exclusive sponsor was Lake Village Motel and Restaurant at Paris. The year after that and in subsequent years there was no exclusive sponsor.

The maps, for Columbia, St. Louis and Kansas City had to be custom made. We borrowed a special projector from the school system and using graph paper taped to a basement wall at the station, I spent several weeks building the 3 maps for use by KWWR and KXEO. The graph paper had squares - where each square represented one square mile. With great care I projected the map image onto the graph paper and used a pencil to fill in squares for state lines, county lines and some cities. The graph paper was then used by Enterprise Electronics to program a static overlay map for their radar system.

Using a phone and modem, we'd dial in to a coupler at Columbia, St. Louis and Kansas City. The coupler would stay connected for about 5 minutes at a time. There was no such thing as a fast modem in 1981, so it took nearly 3 minutes for one complete update of the radar image. After 5 minutes, the coupler would  disconnect and we'd have to dial  back in. We had our own private phone numbers for the 3 radar locations, so we never encountered a busy signal.

Prior to the breakup of AT&T in 1984, the phone company used to offer foreign exchanges. That's a local phone number in a distant city that would act like a local line in that city. KWWR-KXEO had a foreign exchange number for Columbia, to avoid long distance charges for radar calls. The cost of a foreign exchange per month was less than the long distance calls would have added up to. But then came the breakup of AT&T and the cost of a foreign exchange line became prohibitive and we were stuck with long distance charges anytime we accessed radar.

We promoted having color weather radar - to make us unique from KRES-KWIX which only had black and white (green and white) radar. This caused some amusement in the broadcast community and with listeners who wondered why a radio station would promote color weather radar.

We soon discovered the meteorologists at the Columbia National Weather Service office would stop the Columbia radar from scanning to "interrogate" storms. Interrogation of a storm was scanning the storm vertically to determine its severity. Any time they were interrogating storms, we couldn't get an updated radar image. So we'd end up dialing in to St. Louis. Neither St. Louis nor Kansas City stopped their radars to interrogate storms and the NWS folks in Columbia insisted it was necessary to save lives. Never mind making the radar image useless for any TV or radar station accessing it.

In the mid 80s, Bill Ellason at Ellason Avionics in St. Louis was marketing a small radar system to radio stations. The cost of this system was around $10,000. Although it had a color image, this radar was actually a step back compared to the Enterprise system, because there was no map on the radar screen, only mileage rings. We'd use the data on the radar screen and plot storms on a large topographic map that was in a glass frame in the main studio. This radar was located on top of an 80' tower at the studios and was totally under our control. But this was not a precise system and any time it rained hard at the studios, the radar would be attenuated making it pretty well useless until the storm passed by Mexico.

TV stations and cable companies had access to National Weather Service Radar in the 80s. I don't know why, but TV stations rarely used radar for live coverage of storms and warnings. Perhaps network  programming was more important than the weather, but it wasn't until after the turn of the century that TV stations really started to use radar effectively.

It took them a long time to see the value in something radio had been using for a couple of decades. But that also made radio the first choice for live weather coverage anytime of the day or night.

The Internet would change all of that, though, making radar and weather data readily available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. The days of radio and TV having a unique tool to bring weather coverage to listeners and viewers were soon in the past.

That's a shame really. There was something exciting about describing radar images for our radio audience and watching storms in real time. Those were some interesting times. One night, about 1983 or so, a storm system stalled over mid Missouri. A line of severe storms that had started in the evening hours continued well past midnight as the line of storms was not moving on east. I had been doing weather radar coverage from sometime early in the evening, until 3 or 4 AM. The line finally started moving east and severe weather moved out of our area. I finally went home and got some sleep before coming back in to work later that morning.

It was an exciting time to be in radio. Weather coverage like that doesn't exist on the radio anymore. TV stations provide limited live weather coverage. People turn to the Internet for radar and weather data.

So it goes.