My Weather Segment is Back on Public Radio! KPLU

My weekly weather segment on public radio returns on September 2, but on a new public radio station: KPLU.   Specifically, I will be on Fridays at 9 AM for a full five minutes right after the NPR news and KPLU's popular segment Birdnote.   And they will repeat this segment twice in the afternoon during All Things Considered.

Click Icon to go to KPLU's Web Site

But it gets better than that!   I will be talking to Keith Seinfeld, an award-winning science journalist. Keith's been a staff reporter at The Seattle Times and The News Tribune in Tacoma and a freelance writer-producer.   His work has been honored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  I am looking forward to an active and interesting conversation with Keith, who plans to prepare carefully before each of our segments.  It makes a real difference talking to someone who is really interested and enthusiastic about a topic.

I will be talking to Keith Seinfeld, KPLU's  well-known science and health reporter

KPLU has good coverage over all of western Washington and, of course, you can hear them live on the web.

What really get me excited is that my segment will be guaranteed a full five minutes, which will always be at the same time.  This is in stark contrast to KUOW, where my weather segment was low priority and positioned at the end of the first hour of Weekday.   Week after week my time would collapse to only a few minutes, pushing me to throw out important material I really cared about.  Many weeks, especially at the end, they ran out of time, moving me to the second hour or cancelling the whole segment.  This was bad for listeners and it won't happen at KPLU.


The KPLU folks are doing even more.  We will be using internet-based calling and our tests have indicated studio quality audio, in contrast to the hard-to-hear telephone audio at KUOW.   And there will be a coordinated web presence, summarizing the special topics we will be discussing.


During major weather events, such as snowstorms and windstorms, I will be providing extra material on KPLU at other times and days.


I have been extraordinarily impressed with KPLU staff and their excitement about presenting not only the weekend forecast, but helping their listeners appreciate the complexity and fascination of our local weather and other weather topics of profound interest (e.g., global warming).  

Change is always hard, but I am convinced that this change is greatly for the better and will be a huge enhancement over what I was able to do at KUOW.   

I hope you will join me at KPLU on Fridays.  You can submit questions through my blog and through a KPLU email address that will be soon announced..  I really value direct interactions with listeners and hope that questions and comments will increase in this new venue.....cliff

PS:  If you are living in Seattle don't forget to vote for the Seattle School Board.   As I noted in a previous blog, we have real chance of turning the district around if we replace the incumbent candidates by some of the excellent individuals that are running:   Peaslee, McLaren, Martin, Buetow, and Whelan will make a difference.  I have talked with each of them and they won't give the administration a pass when things go wrong and will ask questions, compared to the startling incurious current board majority. 

PSS:  A major degradation of the weather on Sunday and first part of Monday as a relatively strong system comes in.  Expect clouds over the west on Sunday and a good chance of showers, particularly later in the day.  But things will greatly improve midweek.