Radio's Tropical Storm Cristobal Coverage

Tropical Storm Cristobal (Photo: weather.com)

While Tropical Storm CRISTOBAL didn't cause massive radio and media outages it did cause flooding and storm surge along the GULF OF MEXICO and on up into JACKSONVILLE making landfall on SUNDAY (6/7) with 50 mph winds between the mouth of the MISSISSIPPI RIVER and the barrier resort community of GRAND ISLE which was evacuated on SATURDAY.

According to WEATHER.COM: Water levels were running about 5.4 feet above normal tide level on SUNDAY afternoon at Shell Beach, L.A., along the MISSISSIPPI RIVER GULF OUTLET, southeast of NEW ORLEANS near the southern shore of LAKE BORGNE.

In NEW ORLEANS, storm surge was surpassing 3.5 feet on the south shore of LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN on SUNDAY afternoon.

COX/TAMPA PD WILL CALDER told ALL ACCESS, "SATURDAY was the worst of it for us, and SUNDAY has been pretty quiet. We have not activated any hurricane protocols. There has been no interruption of service. Many of the storms we experienced, while severe and some with tornadoes, were not unlike the usual summer storms. Thankfully, the tornado damage we have seen has not been widespread. On-air, most of our coverage involved tracking those tornado warnings."

CUMULUS/MOBILE was in the target zone of Tropical Storm CRISTOBAL's landfall and WABD PD JIMMY STEELE commented, "Currently we are running hourly local storm updates cluster wide and providing detailed information on social media and on our web sites. We are analyzing the situation continuously throughout the day.  

"That plan will evolve as conditions do. We update our plans annually and also have a postmortem meeting following every weather event so our plans are really continuously evolving. Whether live or tracked, being local and timely always matters and industry wide it matters more than ever!

"Today the storm is 'TOPIC A,' and thus what our jocks are talking about and integrating listeners into. We got a lot of flooding down here in this storm than in the last two hurricanes and didn't have to go wall-to-wall coverage."

ENTERCOM Top 40 WEZB/NEW ORLEANS PD TOM "JAMMER" NAYLOR noted that this storm was not carrying a big punch: "Really nothing going on with this. Normal format. Yeah CRISTOBAL really had no chance to grow. Too much dry air mixed in. So this year so far. NEW OTLEANS: 1, Hurricanes: 0.  

A few miles WEST of NEW ORLEANS in HOUSTON, CUMULUS Top 40 KRBE PD LESLIE WHITTLE noted, "Happy (but sorry for the folks in LOUISIANA) that it's so far east of here we've had a completely sunny, beautiful and hot day. Hope everyone on the central and east gulf coast is OK though."

WLLD/TAMPA PD/morning man ORLANDO DAVIS added, "Business as usual. Usual as far as COVID-19 guidelines, injustice rallies, and dissemination of weather updates.  It has been a windy and wet trio of all three assignments for the team."

iHEARTMEDIA/TAMPA BAY SVPP TOMMY CHUCK said, "Other than it raining out (APD/MD) NICK WIZE’s planned staff kayaking excursion, it was a non-event for TAMPA.  We had a few tornado warnings on SATURDAY that we were on top of, but no issues from them.

COX/JACKSONVILLE Dir./Branding & Programming Director Of Branding/Programming NICK FIGUEREDO told ALL ACCESS, "Yeah we lucked out for the most part. Lots of rain with some localized flooding and a tornado warning or two. But overall we got through it with no major issues."

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