First Warning is the name of a severe weather warning system made for broadcast television stations in the United States. A weather advisory product based on First Warning, called First Alert, is an automated version of this product, which has come into widespread use by television stations.
Both products are typically used by television stations that have an in-house news and weather operation, although some television stations that do not broadcast news at all or have their newscasts produced by another station in their market may use the system as well.
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The system was created in the mid-1980s in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the tornado capital of the world, by the chief meteorologist of the city's CBS affiliate KWTV, Gary England.[1] The idea was to provide alerts for severe weather, winter weather and other non-severe weather to television viewers in a timely and convenient manner. The original version of this forecast product featured weather alerts being typed up by a meteorologist on a computer, usually in the station's weather forecast center, with the specific advisory information, the counties/parishes in the warning, and the advisory type being manually inputted into the system.
Another Oklahoma City television station, ABC affiliate KOCO-TV, created an automated version of this product called First Alert (a name the station has since used for its doppler radar system, now known as Advantage Doppler HD, and which the station currently uses as its weather branding), in which the weather information is updated by the computer itself, delivered by a form of the National Weather Service's Weather Wire system.
First Warning's common format typically consists of a map of a state or the specific viewing area of a television station (which may cover multiple counties in one or more states) with a list of the watches, warnings or advisories either in colored text, in text beside a colored key or in text inside a line colored key. Each watch/warning/advisory is assigned a color code pertaining to what is being issued. However, while virtually all First Warning systems may display the same color for Severe Thunderstorm Watches (blue), Severe Thunderstorm Warnings (yellow or orange), Tornado Watches (green) and Tornado Warnings (red), the color codes for other warnings or advisories may vary depending on the station (in some cases, the color code for one watch/warning/advisory may match that of another).
When a new watch (ex.; a Severe Thunderstorm Watch) is issued by the Storm Prediction Center or a warning or advisory (ex.; a Flash Flood Warning) is issued by the National Weather Service local forecast office, a scroll featuring information on the watch/warning/advisory appears usually accompanying a three-note attention signal which lasts between three and eight seconds. The scroll is also used by television stations for information on non-severe weather (ex.; a Significant Weather Alert). Variations of this system are used on television stations across the country, with some differences in the on-air design element. A key example is NBC affiliate KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City; on a variation of the First Warning system called the 4WARN Storm Alert, when a new watch or warning is issued, the screen showing that program shrinks and a map of the state of Oklahoma appears with a specific county name shown above the map and the county under that watch or warning blinking in the warning/watch color. Above it, a scroll showing the information. On the second run of the scroll, a live picture of their 4WARN Doppler is shown. In March 2009, this format for displaying warnings on KFOR's version of First Warning was dropped due to an update of the 4WARN Storm Alert system made compatible for high definition broadcasts of NBC network programming.[2]
In some areas, the First Warning map is displayed on the top of the screen so that viewers who use closed captioning will be able to see the warning information without obstructing the captions displayed below (though the fact that closed captions can sometimes be displayed on the top of the screen, particularly during in-show credits, and the fact that the map may obstruct people or objects on the top of the screen where it is positioned, somewhat defeats this purpose). Some stations may instead use a background placed behind the map and scroll to avoid obstructing the picture of the current program being aired. The system may be removed from the screen in preparation for the broadcast of a severe weather cut-in or simply a commercial break, or may simply be displayed for a short time during a program if no significant severe weather is imminent in the viewing area.
By the early and mid-2000s, the First Warning system received new upgrades as the system became able to toggle between watches and warnings and radar images. However, not all television stations have a radar function on their First Warning systems but the number of stations that have the function is slowly growing. Many television stations are also adding a function on their First Warning systems to allow the use of county-by-county radar images, which often also feature county/parish-specific warning information.
With most television stations broadcasting digital signals, many television stations that have not upgraded the hardware for the First Warning system to be compatible with HD broadcasts may down-convert a high definition signal to standard definition when the graphic is displayed. However, in many cases, the system may be compatible for HD broadcasts but the on-screen graphic map and scroll may appear stretched during such telecasts, causing part of the graphic to be partially cropped on 4:3 standard definition televisions that are hooked up to a digital tuner with the tuner's video setting set at 4:3 (or "fullscreen") mode, and therefore have not been formatted in such a way that the graphic is displayed exclusively within the 4:3 safe area without down-converting the HD signal.