All right, now, Bill hunting him the great American. As you know,
I was off today until a few hours ago when the Reds game was
postponed scheduled to start at four h five pm today in Philadelphia after that debacle
from yesterday. And we'll see about the weather. One look at the weather
app in Philadelphia doesn't look real good promising for that either, but we'll see
what happens. We can't control the weather. Coming up later as Kevin Jackson
at the Kevin Jackson Network dot com. But until then, Steve Raleigh of
WCPO, the chief meteorologists, welcome again in the Bill Cunningham Show. And
Steve may I make an opening statement. Sure of course you can't Bill at
your show. Thank you. Many years ago, many many years ago,
maybe a decade or more, I had a good relationship with Tim Headrock.
Tim Headrick, he would call in as the private citizen. He was the
chief meteorologist at Channel twelve, one of your competitors, but also perceived as
the top weather voice in town. I'm now going to designate Steve Raleigh and
the Tim Headrick Award as the top meteorologist in town because when things are iffy
yesterday I tuned into you, and I listened, and I watched and I
paid attention. I don't know how you did it for three to four hours,
but you did so picking up the pieces of what happened. Tell the
American people this Wednesday afternoon, what happened yesterday between the hours of like three
pm and ten pm, and what's been the fall out of vent I understand
tornaders did touchdown. Please explain this to Tony Bender and the American people.
Well, first, I think we need to acknowledge that very nice designation because
Tim was not only a great meteorologist, but a friend of mine and he
was a really great guy, and he was Cincinnati weather and we miss him.
And he just celebrated his heavenly birthday just the day before yesterday. So
that's very nice for you to say that. Now onto the Yeah, it
was I guess the perfect way to say it. It was the perfect storm
because we had all the right ingredients to have what we had. Yet yesterday
we had four confirmed tornadoes. We ended up having I think it was six
to eight tornado warnings, and then we probably had a dozen severe thunderstorm warnings.
And the reason why it all happened of course, is because of the
situation of just having all of the ingredients and then a cold front move into
the area and it triggered all of what needed to go on to create this
kind of iconic day. Let me share with you a comment that your predecessor
in title, Tim Hendrick said about fifteen years ago. And I said,
how come the Midwest has so many tornadoes? They exist in other places,
but nonetheless we have a large number. And he said, off the Mexican
Plateau, which is elevated, comes to hot air from Canada, and the
North comes to cold air on one side of the rocky mountains on the other
side of the Alleghanies. It's like the borders of this weather system as the
hot air comes off the Mexican Plateau, so it happens to arrive in flat
territory because of the glaciers of fourteen to fifteen thousand years ago. The glaciers
scraped lots of the Midwest clean of any impediments. So tornadoes don't like high
mountains, they like flat areas, they like hot air, they like cold
air, they like the bumpers left and right. And so this part of
the world, especially west of us, have a disproportioned number of tornadoes because
of that condition, and then the glacier. You might recall fifteen thousand years
ago, Steve Raleigh, if you'd look straight up, we were under one
to two miles of solid ice. Look up two miles. There's nothing but
ice all the way straight up, and it receded to create the Great Lakes.
Am I on the right mark as to why we have tornadoes? Well,
yeah, and so have a great day. Very good bill. You
don't need me anymore, that's it. Yeah, No, we are the
number one country in the world for tornadoes because of that very reason, because
of all that cold air that comes out of Canada and sweeps into the middle
of the nation. If you think of the traditional tornado alley and where it
is across Oklahoma and Kansas and up through Iowa and that whole area through the
Dakotas. You also have that warm air coming in off of the Gulf of
Mexica, Mexico, and at this time of the year, of course they
meet in the middle of the nation. Here's the interesting fact though, something
that actually I was going to put on the air tonight so you get to
hear it first, and that is this year alone, Ohio has more tornadoes
and the Midwest in general than anywhere in the Tornado Alley. We've always been
known as a mini tornado alley. However, a lot of people are surmising
at this point, and there's a lot of scientists and experts who are now
doing studies to say, because the things have changed in our climate, that
it might have started to shift eastward because over the course of the last several
to decades, as you know, we have seen more and more severe weather
outbreaks across the area. I was talking to the anchors last night and I
was saying, it's my anecdotal evidence, and this is something I want to
study, and that is every ten years, every decade, we have a
major tornado outbreak in this area. And so while yesterday was certainly a notable
event, we'll see to the level at which it will match for this decade
because we haven't had an outbreak yet in this ten year period. I'm interested
to see what the National Weather Service has to say, especially over the confirmed
tornado in West Union over in Adams County, because that one really seemed to
be a rather strong, strong meteorological signature of a tornado. Where did the
four tornadoes strike at this point subject to confirmation. There might be others,
but we're approximately did the Ford tornadoes hit yesterday? Yeah, Ripley County,
northern Kentucky, in Adams County, and in the tip top of the panhandle
of Brown County. So those will be the four survey areas that the Weather
Service look at. The other tornado warnings that we had, while they were
possible, I don't know that they were confirmed, so they may leave that
alone unless other evidence comes from first responders to say we think we had one,
and then they'll add that to the list to survey F one, F
two, F three, F four What were They don't know yet, won't
know until they make that survey. And the terminology now is EF as opposed
to the just the vegeta scale. It used to be just Fugeta. Ted
Pageta developed this scale, but they changed it because we needed more determination for
a tornado as opposed to twisting winds or straight line wins, so several years
ago they changed it, so it's an enhanced Fageta scale. So that's where
EF comes from. So the technical term now is EF one and so forth
and so on. So what was the guy's name Fred, was it Fred
Fergito? Is that him? No? No? Fred Ted Ted Ted Forjeta
FuG j I t a doctor Ted Fajeta. You must feel angry about this.
He went from an F one to EF I mean, yeah, right,
he got put in second place. Now he's the guy who developed the
scale. Right, the heck with it? Now, what's done with meteorology?
I'm going to be a biologist now, yeah, go ahead. Well,
what do you think about the tony benders of this world who say,
you know what, because of Steve Raleigh, the schools were let out at
noon. Schools in northern Kentucky some were let out eleven thirty am and then
some of twelve thirty, some at two, some at one whatever. And
that than hundreds of thousands of parents were put out because they had to pick
up their kids and bad stuff didn't happen to like five, six, seven,
eight pm. And because of because of Steve Raleigh and others, that
all these parents had their lives disrupted. He's angry of picking up his kids
in school and head leave work, get there at noon and it didn't happen
for five hours later. What do you say to the Tony Benners of this
world will say that was much ado about nothing. Well, first off,
I'll say this, I love Tony. I'm sure he didn't say anything derogatory
toward yours truly. But nevertheless, with that said, Waked actually on a
serious note, talked about that yesterday. I'm sitting there doing my thing in
the morning, and I was there, I don't know, about seven thirty
eight o'clock yesterday morning, and we got up to about nine nine thirty and
the anchors came out to do a couple of things, and I heard them
say that they're closing schools. I said, why are they closing schools?
Well, that's just what they're doing, I guess because of the severe weather.
Now, the problem with that idea is, I don't think there was
any of us that were all that greatly concerned at the time period of they
felt. Let me put it this way, I find it interesting that superintendents
did make that call. Now, I'm sure there's some pretty good reasons,
and they would come up and tell me why, and I'd like to have
a discussion about that. But the reality of the situation is is being weather
aware is what always is the most important thing, and people don't take it
for that. You know, whether it's watching myself or any one of the
folks in town. If you know whether it's five, twelve or nineteen that
happen to be your favorites. I get that, but none of us would
say you closed down and just stop life. The key is, and you
know it's become a hashtag. It's weather aware. Hashtag weather aware. We
all have the apps on our phone for weather. Hopefully you have Channel Nights,
but I got to pay the mortgage. But the reality is is that
that's what you should be aware of, and then that way, if things
are developing, then you're aware that you need to make adjustments. I think
the difficulty, truly, as we were discussing yesterday, is is this is
a very difficult job for the superintendent because they've got to make a call before
things happen. They are kind of the school forecasters, and so they felt
that that was a safer prospect of doing than the chance of something breaking out
at around that two or three time frame. I have to say, I
don't think we personally at Channel nine because Brandon was on before me and Jennifer
before that anything was going to happen probably before three or four o'clock. Now,
if that's close enough for some schools, I could get that. But
I mean, this was a wholesale shutdown, like it was a big snow
event. It was going to happen. And I'm not really sure why that
is, except to say, as I think about it, there's probably a
lot of snow days in the pocket of a lot of school systems because we
only had what seven seven eight inches of snow, so they probably didn't use
them so they could afford to do it without giving a thing by the government.
I kind of liked it, Steve Raleigh, because I had a dental
appointment. I went up seventy one in Mason. It was wonderful, sow
Tara Harden. I went up there about fifteen minutes. In fact, I
called ahead to say, hey, are you still opening? Because oh hell's
breaking loose cats and dogs living together. I saw birds flying upside down past
my window. I said, something's going on. The dead were coming out
of grades over a gate to Heaven Cemetery. But getting back to your original
point, Homeland Security, thank you for the Ghostbusters reference. Am you're looking
at this? I'm gonna what the hell's going on? And I thought,
I started praying and I went in the basement, didn't come out to this
morning about seven am minutes. But a Homeland Security told Kenton County to shut
down the schools. I'm talking to Homeland Security. According to Rob Sanders,
got a call from a Homeland Security shut down the schools. And so it's
like, are you kidding me? Homeland Security said to shut down the schools.
So I tell that Tony Bender type the skeptics, the Saint Thomas's of
our world, skeptics that somehow imagine if that hurricane that hit Indiana hit downtown
Covington or downtown Newport now and you can't with specificity to say it's going to
go sixty miles west of Covington, all right, imagine that hitting downtown Covington.
What would have happened? Yeah, well, you know, on a
real serious note, getting aside, we had that tornado that was very close
to the border of Cincinnati and hit somewhere or shouldn't say tornado warning, and
so as a result there we had a lot of reports of folks who saw
spinning cloud moving across that area. So you're right, one of these days
Unfortunately, on a very sad note, we will end up having some tornado
hit a major more metropolitan area or major larger city, and that is always
the scary part of this whole proposition. So far in the last twenty four
hours that has not happened. We haven't had any confirmation of anywhere that wasn't
very rural, so hopefully it was more just a set of trees. And
I apologized to anybody who may have been glanced by any of these strong winds
as well. It's not to be taken lightly, but you're right, one
of these days this will happen, so safety. And here's the bottom line,
Bill. I think it was a guy, doctor Neil Frank. Do
you remember him at all? Why, that's right. He used to talk
to Dan rather about this and I was very lucky over the course of about
fifteen years or so to be a part of a weather conference where I sat
right next to him to try and soak in as much knowledge as I possibly
can, and his one thing that he lives by that I do to this
day. And sometimes it's rankled TV executives, other people, certainly the populace.
Because of this. You always forecast on the side of least regret.
So talking about the schools, it's a good move to shut them down.
I know it was an inconvenience, but this one day that we don't shut
him down and it hits the school why didn't you shut the schools down?
So you know, with all of that, you can't win. Yeah,
the side you always forecast on the side of least regret. I'll say this.
When I practiced law more actively, a murder trial was a big event.
When you're in the talk radio business, the presidential election is a big
event. And when I watched the four main TV stations, everyone's on the
air three to four hours. Who makes the call? Is it you,
Tanya or Rourke? Who makes the call that Steve Riley's on set for three
to four hours without commercials? Who makes that call? Well, first off,
we always bow to Tanya as she is the queen of Channel nine.
So usually after I finished washing her vehicle, I'll then myself make the call
for going on live. And then we had parameters in all honesty of how
we handle this. If it's a severe thunderstorm warning, we go on,
say what we have to say and get off. Well, we won't stay
on for that. If there's a tornado warning, meaning there's a storm that
could produce a tornado at any moment, then we stay on for the length
of the tornado warning thirty to forty five minutes determined by the National Weather Service,
and at that point we assess if we need to go off or on.
Now, yesterday was like those rare days where as soon as one was
about finished, oh look there's another one. There's a severe thunderstorm. Wait
a minute, there's a tornado warning. So yesterday, and I want to
pay you a nice compliment too, to meteorologist Brandon Spinner. He did a
great job partnering me with me yesterday, and because there were two of us
on and having two separate venues, both the Weather Center and the Chroma key
Board, we were able to stay on top of these storms because I'll tell
you, you know, there was a couple of times, you know,
Brandon's talking about something and I said, oh, there it is a tornado,
or he said, hey, Steve, look behind you. The bar
said new polygon. You know that kind of thing. So, yeah,
it was a busy, busy day. Well, I'm going to designate you
the doctor Neil Frank and the Tim Hendrick of the Tri State did a good
job. I know, Tony Bender and the skeptics might say it was much
ado about nothing. But if that tornado had struck downtown Covington or Xenia again,
had had Saint Gertrude's and Madera, or took out Mason, that would
have been a different story. East regret. You can be you can be
wrong a hundred times in doing too much, But if you do too little
and a tornado strikes downtown Cincinnati with teeth, hair and I everywhere, then
then you're not the Tim Hendrick anymore of the Tri State. Steve Rolly be
looking for work somewhere. So it's I love that. I love your term
least regret. Yeah, you know, I when when he told me that,
I never forgot it, because it's the economy of words that say so
much right, and so you're you're apt in saying that it's it. It
is the way to go. And I wish more people would take that tack,
and sometimes they don't, and that's where everybody gets in trouble. So
I think if you live by that, it's much better to get in trouble
by doing too much than too little. Absolutely, Steve Rolly, get my
best at Tanya or she's got that Bentley out back, that light blue Bentley
convertible. You'll be working on the tires later. This beautiful, beautiful,
but that's you know, that's just Wednesday's car. And listen, I do
have to run. I got to get to that before I get into work.
I understand. Steve Raley. Good job and thank you very much.
Thank you. Thanks us at Bentley for every day of the week with white
interior and mink around the steering wheel. It's beautiful, Steve Raleigh, thank
you very much. Thank you. I'll see he's got to get back on
air. Today's going to be a little different. It's gonna be a little
cold, but no catastrophe for the critics and for those that are in the
stands criticizing the doer of deeds. Imagine if that tornado would hit downtown Covington,
or Cincinnati or downtown Batavia, things would have been different. Let's continue
with more. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven hundred WLW. I feel the
brotherly love. The fall is per Rok. He'll be in test for our
Natty Batters. Is the wedge take on the film a three run home run.
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