Meteorologist looks back at improvements to forecasting
By Laura Hand
Tuesday, February 03, 2009 at 7:27 p.m.
Wayne Mahar joined NBC3 in 1985 and, as he goes into his 25th year, we've been looking back at weather forecasting changes.
He made it clear, from the beginning, that he did not see meteorology as just an entertaining segment of the news, and began upgrading forecasting tools. Reliance on the National Weather Service radar at Montague (on the Tug Hill) was problematic: 60% of the time, the then-Air Force maintained facility was not working.
The Labor Day Storm set in motion street-level mapping to track localized weather. Triple radar, with stations in Rochester and Buffalo, began in 1999. Both have been upgraded several times since then, as Wayne and the NBC3 Weather Team provide updated forecasts on NBC3 (Digital 3.1), CW6 (Digital 3.2), and WeatherPlus (Digital 3.3) as well as here on CNYcentral.com.
