SNOW!!!

Only one thing trumps the coverage of a severe thunderstorm in the television news business. SNOW. Yep, if there's a chance a snowflake will fall in the piedmont, no, the state, we've got to have a crew covering it, team coverage if it's in our area. Last week the first significant snowfall was expected in the mountains of North Carolina. So, yours truly and ace reporter Brent Campbell were off to the mountains to capture its full glory.

After loading up the live truck, something I hate to do when driving into a snowstorm because it's basically a top heavy van that most people wouldn't be caught dead in driving in hazardous conditions. But we have to be live so we start our treck west in the van.

Our first stop comes when we get to the Blue Ridge Parkway and see some snow covered trees and a nice overlook if we need to go live from here later in the day. We continue on to the college town of Boone. We unload camera and tripod on the beautiful campus of Appalachian State as the snow is falling. Unfortunately, it's only flurries, and not much on the ground. Some beauty shots of campus and a couple of interviews with students who say this is no big deal (it really isn't) and we need to find some lunch.

Over lunch we discuss driving another half hour to Beech Mountain, the highest ski resort east of the Mississippi. Surely they've got some snow coming down up there. A quick call to our favorite PR rep Gil and he says "come on up, the skiing's great!"

Now, those who know Brent and I are aware that we never miss a meal, so after the best French Onion soup (you get scissors to cut the cheese on top) and sandwich, we head up the mountain to Ski Beech.

Along the way, we pass Grandfather Mountain and notice it's covered in snow and ice, not an unusual site this time of year. Little did we know it was a precurser of things to come. We blew through Banner Elk and passed by Sugar Mountain while barely noticing because we couldn't SEE the slopes. Normally when driving up Hwy. 184 you go right past the slopes of Sugar, so to not see them because of the snow should've clued us in on the conditions to come. It didn't.

We continued on our quest to get the best snow video and best possilbe live shot location and show the competition who's number one, oops, the News Leader. As I mentioned earlier, we're not in our trusty unit 3, an Explorer with four-wheel drive and about 130,000 hard miles. No, we're in a top-heavy Ford van with rear-wheel drive. After negotiating one-to-many switchbacks I came to the conclusion that we weren't gonna make it to the top of Beech Mountain, which meant no live shot. As I called our Assistant News Director to give him the news I tried to think of a way to keep him happy. I started by telling him I have good news and bad news. He wanted the bad news first. "Kevin, bad news is we aren't gonna make it to Beech Mountain." Silence on the other end. Mr. Daniels replies with, "you said you had good news?" So I told him, "we aren't gonna make it to Beech Mountain," pause for effect, "because we're in a blizzard!" The constant birrage of "no way" told me the boss didn't believe us. We sent pictures via our cell phones and suddenly we were the lead for both shows with live picutres and video throughout the newscasts.

Obviously, we still had a story to shoot but it was like shooting fish in a barrell. We pulled off the road at a local ski shop and found a couple of guys willing to stand out in the snowstorm long enough for us to interview them. One was skiing to work, too cool. After taking a beating for a half an hour and shooting about as much as I could (after being nearly blown over with camera and tripod) it was time to make the hour trip back to that spot we found earlier on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Safely back to the parkway overlooking the foothills, Brent began the task of listening to soundbites, and writing to the video I had bagged. While he came up with the words of our story, I needed to get the live shot set up. Now, even though we were a good 70 miles or more from our Winston-Salem tower there was nothing blocking our line of sight because we were some 3700 feet up on the east facing side of a mountain. With lights set up and a nice spot for our live shot I gave a little prayer for some snow to fall during our live shot.

Once Brent was finished with the writing, I began the editing process, made all the easier now that we have our non-linear editing in our trucks and our still-new-to-us XD Cams. One package, two vo's and a couple of teases edited and our first live shot went off without a hitch. We even got a little snow to come into the picture during the live shot.

After editing and feeding the six package back to the studio in High Point, we were ready for our six o'clock live shot. And, as if coming from the Heavens, it began to snow like you wouldn't believe. Needless to say, the producers and everyone back at the studio loved it. So, our day came to an end; after driving back an hour and half to the bureau and unloading the live truck, I was able to get home in time to see the kids to bed.