What I found increased my interest; of the 76 tornadoes spotted that day, the first tornado started near an area I've spent a lot of time in - Lawton, Oklahoma. There was no report of damage or injuries, so I had to go elsewhere to find out what had happened. I went to the local newspaper - the Lawton Constitution's web site at www.lawton-constitution.com.
It seems to me that relatively little attention has been paid to the proliferation of local newspaper sites that have rapidly become available on the Web. I've used these sites as an information resource for news stories before; you just can't beat the local newspaper's coverage for detail and background for a major story. An added benefit is in the follow-up; in the days after a story, more facts become known. This information can help you make sense of stories that are inexplicable based on the initial information, which is all that the major news services usually report.
The Lawton paper didn't even mention the local tornado, so it must have been unremarkable. The next thing I did was go to my old home town's newspaper at www.stjoenews-press.com, the Saint Joseph, Missouri News-Express. I knew from the radar images I'd seen the previous day that heavy weather had gone through the region. Even if a few local people had been killed in the storm, the much larger Oklahoma City tragedy would have received all the focus; the major media doesn't waste lines on little Midwestern towns. A peek at their web site didn't mention local storm problems, so that was good. What they did have was an AP video clip about the series of tornadoes that was first rate.
By this time, I had become aware that the previous day's bad weather had moved east and was still spawning dangerous storms. I used another resource at iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/nationalwarnings.html. This site shows you the current and recent US weather warnings. The categories include tornado, hurricane, severe thunderstorm, flood, flash flood, winter storm, special marine and non-precipitation warnings. You click on the icon you want for the type of warning you want to see (including a Show All icon). If there are live or recent warnings, the icon is highlighted in red. Indeed, the day after the Oklahoma City tornadoes was very busy; every few minutes new tornado warnings were being issued. Most were from rural counties, but Fort Worth and Tyler, Texas were among the large communities threatened by tornadoes.
At this point, there isn't much more you can do; you can look at the local weather radar, but that usually isn't very informative. A few sites have weather cams, but finding them is difficult (try www.wxusa.com, mentioned below). There isn't much available in up-to-the-second news and weather coverage unless you can find a local radio station. Even if you do, radio coverage often isn't very informative. I expect that this situation will change in the future -- probably serviced by the Web, but I'm not sure who will step into the void to provide such information.
Up to now, the focus has been on local resources for weather and news. But there's more that the local newspaper web sites can provide. If you're a sports fan, local newspaper web sites are invaluable resources for local teams. Whether you're interested in a small high school football team in West Texas, or what the Chicago media is saying about the Cubs, you can use local and regional newspapers to get a feel for how the team is doing that you can't get in any other way.
So how do you find local newspapers on the web? There are lists, but they aren't usually very complete, especially for smaller communities. For a specific place, I usually type the city name and "newspaper" in a metasearch engine like MetaCrawler. One of the hits I get is almost invariably the local newspaper site. For other specialized weather sites, try the links at www.wxusa.com. This site offers links to many weather resources on the Web -- local, regional, national and global sites are available.
CATBAR - Brain Candy #22 - News, Weather & Sports / Brian Rock / December 6 1999