Supplementing Hurricane Coverage with Max Alert Live

When a hurricane is threatening, viewers tune in to their local television station to stay informed with the latest information on where the storm is and how to stay safe. During these times, the local meteorologist who is already stretched thin has added responsibilities that are critical to their audience. They must find the best ways to monitor the storm, communicate important updates, and do their day-to-day activities across all of their various platforms. With the latest updates for Max Alert Live, The Weather Company can help with those communications, ease their workload and allow them to better leverage all available resources.

Max Alert Live’s core mission has always been to provide breaking severe weather alerts. But since it is built off the powerful Max graphics engine it opens a lot of doors to displaying other types of information. For example, when a hurricane is approaching, television stations like to put up a small map in the corner of the screen to show the latest forecast cone of uncertainty, satellite loop, or some other current information about that storm. Traditionally this has been accomplished by either dedicating one of the main graphics systems just to provide that video, or by pre-rendering this information and keying it on the air. The disadvantage of using one of the main graphics systems is that now the meteorologist has lost a key piece of their workflow for analyzing the storm and creating great graphics for their audience. Pre-rendering that information can be cumbersome and has some disadvantages around the timeliness of the data, as well as the workflow to get it on the air. So, what is the best solution?

With Max Alert Live The Weather Company is solving both of those problems by integrating critical hurricane data directly into the system. There are hurricane enabled scenes that will both show the current forecast cone and any additional hurricane details the users may want. This can be used in a variety of ways. For example, if there are no current warnings for a particular area but a hurricane is forming and the station plans to cover it, they can enable a scene in Max Alert Live to show the latest satellite loop and/or forecast track on a map. Additionally, they can add other hurricane details (position, wind speed, direction, etc.) to keep their viewers informed on the latest status of the storm, all without pre-rendering or tying up another graphics system.

It gets a little more interesting once there are active warnings for their area. They’ll still want to show the hurricane information, but they’ll also want to, for example, scroll the latest hazards and give their viewers a closer view of the situation. Max Alert Live will handle this automatically. For example, the map can start with a view that is centered over the hurricane to show the forecast track, and then automatically zoom to the DMA view that the meteorologist has set to show the local hazards. After that, the scene can be set to enter a county-by-county look at the current hazards and radar. Once it is done with that tour, it will zoom back out and start over, all while showing a crawl of the latest local hazards.

In addition, the user can supplement these scenes with other assets that will enhance their coverage. For example, maybe there is a tower cam by a local beach that they’d like to display with the map. They can easily add this as an element to the scene so that viewers will have everything previously mentioned, and real time video of the scene as it’s unfolding.

Max Alert Live also contains tools to streamline the communication of critical information outside of what is in the currently active hazards. There is an interface to allow users to easily supplement or override the information that is currently in the crawl. Users may want to share evacuation plans or other important local information. In that case they can log in to the Max Alert Live control center web app to add manual crawls and either entirely replace the auto-generated crawl, or place additional text before, within, or after the auto-generated crawl. Since the interface is web based, they can perform this action from anywhere, saving time and removing any dependencies on having to directly access their local network to make changes.

The vision for Max Alert Live is to power on screen alerting with the Max platform and graphics engine, allowing users to go beyond just current local hazards. It also has the capability to add school closing information in a panel view or even sports scores or headlines. Max Alert Live can also send commands to your common news control room systems such as Harmonic, Chyron and others to trigger actions within your programming chain. With the newest tools, The Weather Company is making it easier for television stations to improve alerting while optimizing their prior investments.