‘We’re Not Touching a Bridge’: How Fox Weather’s Storm-Chasing Team Stayed Safe During ‘Downright Scary’ Hurricane

The Fox Weather team moves round Florida in a automobile known, aptly, as the Fox Weather Beast. The Ford F-250 storm-chasing vehicle has a 385 horse-powered V8 engine and a chassis modified with entrance metal bumpers, built-in winch, tubular push bar and structural mattress-cap. In the driver’s seat is Fox Weather correspondent Robert Ray, who has been reporting on the bottom as Storm Milton barreled down on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

At one level on Wednesday, Ray’s staff, 19-miles inland, considered moving to southern Taylor County in anticipation of landfall. It was once too dangerous. They opted instead to strategically remain in safer zones, like neighborhoods that provide a point of pure safety because the storm continued to aggravate.

Ray mentioned: “We had been having a look deeply into reporting reside from Steinhatchee upon the landfall. Had many discussions this morning with executives and meteorologists… with the possibility of up to 20 feet of storm surge, even if we discovered the perfect ground there, it was no longer well worth the risk.”

The choice to move inland also reflects Fox Weather’s stringent security protocols, which can be outlined in coaching to its newshounds.

What kind of protocols, as an example? “No bridge, no bridge. That’s certainly one of our ideas here with this staff. We’re no longer touching a bridge,” Ray said.

“If America’s Climate staff is ever in a state of affairs the place there’s no power, the Fox Weather Beast is filled with its personal cell transmission and IP satellite tv for pc equipment,” a source at Fox Weather explained to Mediaite. The purpose is uninterrupted protection even in the worst prerequisites.

All through publicizes Ray’s photographer filmed out of the again of this automobile to lend a hand maintain the shot up and protect him from the prerequisites.

When reporting the information from the frontlines throughout the fury of a storm or excessive storm, journalists find themselves in twin roles: turning in existence-saving information to the public while also straight away confronting the storm’s effects themselves.

The challenges from on-the-floor stipulations are as unhealthy for newshounds as they are the public, going through relentless wind and driving rain as well as the threat of a storm surge, all of which can totally alternate the map of protection.

For Fox Weather, the operation requires a strategic resolution-making effort and reside analysis that reaches up during the ranks to the highest of the news group. Despite the audacious scenes that play out on the air of cable information networks, security is the tenet.

Talking to Mediaite, a source on the community outlined how Fox Weather’s response to Hurricane Milton concerned a backfield multi-disciplinary team of specialists and executives. The crew, launched in October 2021, now comprises one of the most highly skilled meteorologists within the trade, like Mike Seidel, a brand new rent from The Weather Channel, and Bob Van Dillen. Different big hires have incorporated hurricane professional Bryan Norcross.

Training isn’t just a precaution; it’s a subject of survival for newshounds in these excessive-stakes eventualities. Journalists have to be fully equipped sooner than venturing into the chaos—because one unsuitable and unpredictable second can put any individual on the group in critical danger. At one level, all the way through are living broadcast, Ray was almost hit by using a falling tree.

Ray instructed the story: “I had just obtained achieved with a reside record where I was once showing the Manatee River which is correct past this tree and walked into my vehicle, checked out my telephone and the entire surprising, growth, the tree goes into the automobile [we were using] the place [cameraman] Lloyd is, he had the digital camera lens lined so the spray and particles didn’t hit it. We didn’t seize the moment, but you see the aftermath.”

Reporters from other networks had equally shut calls, together with CNN’s Anderson Cooper who used to be hit by means of an unidentified sq.-formed object while reporting live.

With the specter of power outages and flying debris, Fox Climate teams are kitted out with helmets, goggles, meals supplies and gas. They also had conversation gadgets to allow them to remain in steady contact with their team, including i-Sat phones and Starlink antennas.

All mentioned, regardless of how much training a staff has, the underside line is that frontline reporting requires grit. As Ray put it on Wednesday night time: “It’s just downright frightening.”

The post ‘We’re Now Not Touching a Bridge’: How Fox Climate’s Storm-Chasing Team Stayed Secure Right through ‘Downright Scary’ Storm first seemed on Mediaite.