Doppler 16: not just a promotional gimmick, really!
Nakasha Ahmad
So, What's My Point?
As you all learned in high school English and journalism classes, part of the media's job is "to inform and educate," the public. And since those folks at The Observer are crazy enough to GIVE me 10 inches of white space in which to rant every two weeks, I am a member (albeit a somewhat dubious one) of the media. So, this week I thought I would actually take my job seriously and try to "inform and educate" you, the public, about an exciting new development on the South Bend news scene.
This will make you, the average news-watcher, a lot better prepared for the ills that may befall you in this treacherous world of ours.
The development? The brand new and completely unique Super Doppler 16. Yes, those wonderful folks over at NewsCenter 16 — the same people that work hard to bring you Storm Team 16 in those hazardous winter months — have recently built their OWN weather center. They now have Super Doppler 16 weather radar, providing you — yes, YOU — with the latest up-to-the-minute weather coverage. The other stations don't HAVE their own weather stations, so they have to wait for the official reports.
Apparently, the only way to get around that is to build your own weather station. And the quality folks at NBC have done just that to serve us and bring us up-to-the-nanosecond weather info.
Now, you might want to know, how much more quickly Super Doppler 16 bring us satellite pictures to us? When do we get to be the first to find out what's brewing in the brooding skies over South Bend, Ind.? Well, folks, this may be unbelievable, but we, the privileged people who exclusively watch NewsCenter 16, get our weather an average of are you ready for this — not three, not four, not even five, but TEN minutes sooner than the rest of Michiana! A whole 10 minutes! That's one-sixth of an hour! By building Super Doppler 16, NewsCenter 16 is giving you weather information faster than any other station in Michiana. Storm heading your way? Tune into NBC to know when the rain is going to start pouring down 10 minutes faster than everybody else. And why has WNDU built this weather station? To serve you better.
Now, some of you might be thinking that 10 minutes is not a long time. You might think that getting your weather news at 6:30 instead of 6:20 is not a big deal. Or you might even, heaven forbid, think this is all a bunch of unmitigated hype and nonsense.
Please.
Imagine yourself as a young scout in the ancient city of Pompeii. Imagine having an angry Vesuvius looming over your doorstep, ready at any second to deliver on its promise of a gory, lava-and-ash-encrusted death. Imagine that your local geology guy or gal had miraculously built a state-of-the-art volcano tracking system that let you know 10 minutes earlier than everyone else if good old Mount Vesuvius felt like blowing its top that particular day. Don't tell me you wouldn't like to have a 10-minute head start on the general stampede of panic? Sure, you might not get that much farther, and you might still die a gory, lava-and-ash-encrusted death, but you would be 10 minutes further along than everyone else.
My point here is that we shouldn't really dismiss Super Doppler 16 as, say, a completely useless promotional gimmick playing on our anal-retentive need to dissect every bit of information on the state of the air and precipitation levels outside. No. Super Doppler 16 fulfills a deep-seeded need we have to know about the state of the weather and to know about it NOW. We should thank WNDU for fulfilling this need.
Meanwhile, make sure to check out Super Doppler 16 before heading outside.
Nakasha Ahmad is a senior at Saint Mary's College. Her column runs every other Thursday. The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, December 2, 1999
