Early last week, as projections had powerful Hurricane Ian headed straight for the Tampa Bay area, my wife and I evacuated our St. Petersburg, Florida, home to avoid the devastating storm.
To keep track of what was happening from our far-away hotel room, we occasionally tuned into CNN and The Weather Channel, but mostly, we did what most Florida residents do when a storm sets its eyes on the state. We turned to local news.
Newspapers, local TV and radio stations and, most of all, Florida’s meteorologists became our lifelines to the most important and accurate news. During every waking hour, not more than a half hour went by when we weren’t checking the Twitter feeds and Facebook accounts of Tampa Bay meteorologists Denis Phillips of Tampa Bay’s ABC Action News and Paul Dellegatto from Tampa Bay’s Fox 13. Both have been with their Florida stations since the 1990s. I had to recharge my phone constantly because of watching local newscasts from around the state.
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