1987 NOAA Weather Radio PSA [13/13] Tornadoes

This is a set of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) aired on NOAA Weather Radio during severe weather events in the summer of 1987 (I think). They were recorded from WXL38 (Binghamton, New York) during a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. If I recall correctly (I was only 12), a different PSA would air each time through the rotation. This probably means they were all recorded on one cart that they could throw in whenever there was a threat of severe weather.

The announcer's voice is unusually ominous and calculated, even for NOAA Weather Radio. I wondered at the time if this was the reason they used him to read the PSAs. I know that for a 12-year-old at the time, this guy's voice combined with the thunder, lightning, downpours, winds, and my parents' overreaction to it (we'd all have to go down to the basement with the weather radio) was the ultimate creepy/scary adrenaline rush.

I have never found any information on the Internet about these PSAs, which leads me to believe they may have been locally produced. The only information on NOAA Weather Radio PSAs I have ever been able to find is about the ones recorded by Richard Sterban of the Oak Ridge Boys, for broadcast on commercial radio.

I would appreciate any information anyone might have regarding these PSAs, and recordings of NWR from the period in general.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• NOAA
• weather
• radio
• nwr
• weatheradio
• psa
• public
• service
• announcement
• binghamton
• new
• york
• voice
• announcer
• severe
• warning

[Hurricaneman88]

@Yankhoe I can understand your thoughts on the human touch. You can't call any company nowadays and hear a human being answer the phone. The reason that NOAA changed the format from humans to computer voices, is, of course, money. Why have to pay humans around the clock, 24/7 when you can enter the data you want and the computer voice reads it? At least the Tom and Donna voices sound a heck of alot better than the original Paul voice (which sounds like an Indian in a well).

[YankHoe]

Computerized voices one of the worst things they ever did, the human touch is sorely missing from much weather stuff nowadays and it seems to be getting worse.