The Weather Underground hits live TV today, when the inaugural episode of the Weather Underground live cable TV show airs from 6-8 p.m. EDT Monday, August 24 on The Weather Channel (TWC). I’m in Atlanta today to help launch this unique effort, which aims appeal to everyone’s inner weather geek by focusing on the science behind weather and forecasting. TWC is really making an impressive effort on this, complete with a custom set built to look like an underground bar, an original theme song of Seattle-grunge type music, and state-of-the art 3D visual presentations. Hosted by Emmy-award winning TWC meteorologist Mike Bettes, the show will air weekdays from 6 - 8 pm Eastern time. Both Bob Henson and I will be featured twice this week. Bob is scheduled to go Tuesday and Thursday from our San Francisco office; I will appear today (in the Atlanta studio) and Friday (via Skype from my Michigan office.) San Francisco-based Weather Underground meteorologists Jim Menard, Shaun Tanner, and John Celenza are also scheduled to appear during the first two weeks of the show. There will periodically be guest appearances from other severe weather experts and WU community members (personal weather station owners and bloggers.) Each show will aim to promote a unique feature of the Weather Underground web site, like the latest blog post by Bob or myself, WunderPhotos, or personal weather stations. Breaking weather events will be the main focus, but climate change stories will also occasionally be featured.
WU’s unique community of personal weather station owners and fans will play an integral role in the show’s live, interactive experience--fans will be able to submit questions via #WUTV across social media, report current conditions in their area, contribute to the creation of show segments, access behind-the-scenes live-stream video via wunderground.com and participate in weather roundtables live on air.
Video 1. Take a look at our cool new set for the WUTV show in this promo video.
The entire show will only be available on The Weather Channel cable TV show, but some live streaming content will be available throughout on http://bit.ly/wutvshow.
You can follow Weather Underground on Twitter and Facebook for exclusive show content.
I gave Mike Bettes a tough grilling during his interview for host of the new Weather Underground TV show; you can see the humorous five-part interview here.
I'll have an update on the tropics by noon EDT today. My post from Sunday afternoon on Danny and the rest of the tropics is here.