Tube City Almanac

September 30, 2008

You Don't Need a Weatherman

Category: Commentary/Editorial, So-Called Radio Humor || By

As some of you probably read in the Post-Gazette on Saturday, Verizon is discontinuing its free telephone weather forecasts.

The weather hotline --- available at (412) 936-1212 --- has been available since at least the 1960s (the number was originally "WEather 6-1212"). Bell System was originally mandated to provide the weather forecasts as a public service; although that regulation has since been dropped, Verizon has offered it as a courtesy ever since.

A phone company spokesman told Gary Rotstein of the P-G that the widespread availability of the Weather Channel and weather forecasts on the Internet have made the hotline obsolete.

Still, 936-1212 was heavily used by elderly people without computers and lazy radio disc jockeys all over Pittsburgh.

Last weekend, on my lousy radio show, I decided to interview one of the people who has done the weather forecasts at 936-1212 for many years:


. . .

Incidentally, you can get free, up-to-date weather forecasts directly from the National Weather Service (the thing Rick Santorum --- remember him? --- wanted to eliminate) by calling (412) 262-2170.

And if you know how to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (yeah, right!) you can get real-time weather observations by calling the automatic reporting services maintained at Mon-Yough area airports.

The number for Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin is (412) 466-8968, while the number for Rostraver Airport near Belle Vernon is (724) 379-5815.

Those numbers will give you wind speed and direction and tell you if it's raining, snowing, cloudy or foggy, but they don't give forecasts.

Of course, Duquesne Light still provides a time and temperature hotline at (412) 391-9500. Down in Uniontown, Fayette Bank and Trust used to have its own time-and-temperature line, but I don't remember the number, and I don't know if it still works.

If anyone from the Fay-West area remembers the number, can you try it out, and post it in the comments if it works?

. . .

Finally --- and this is no laughing matter --- the P-G and Trib offer a reminder that things that seem "cool" when TV detectives do them don't work in real life.

I don't know the officer accused, and I certainly don't know if he's guilty. (He's got a hearing scheduled for Monday.) But there's a lot of mistrust of police officers, and incidents like these don't help make their jobs any easier.






Your Comments are Welcome!

I remember that the Daily News had a weather line. One year I must have called it every 15 minutes to check on the weather for the EF school picnic at Kennywood Park. The reason being was that I was told that if it rained we were definitely not going!!
Bill - September 30, 2008



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