With three days until Hurricane Irene’s projected landfall, local stations are preparing for the storm in some new ways, like developing smartphone apps with weather trackers, and some traditional ways, like delivering messages from emergency management. For stations on the southern east coast, anticipating a hurricane is hardly new. So how do producers and reporters find fresh things to report on in the days leading up to a storm?
The answer, at least for some stations, seems to be in archival footage. Over the course of the past several days, stations in Greenville, SC — a market that was hit hard in 1989’s Hurricane Hugo and is currently on the projected path for Hurricane Irene — have aired then-and-now segments comparing regional readiness for a potentially devastating hurricane (watch one from CBS affiliate WSPA above).