Tag Archives: Doppler Dave Oliver

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‘Doppler Dave’ set to wage a form of war

Dave Oliver might not like to be associated with the term “war,” but that’s how I see the next stage of the iconic Amarillo, Texas, TV meteorologist’s life.

The man known throughout the Texas Panhandle as “Doppler Dave” is stepping away from the “green screen” for a while. He is fighting prostate cancer, which he said has been caught in its early stages. The cure rate for early detection of prostate cancer is good, so I want to join his many fans — and believe me, they number in the many thousands — in wishing him a speedy recovery.

Oliver and I are not great friends. I don’t know him well. I only know of him after living in Amarillo for more than 20 years. He has been chief meteorologist for KFDA NewsChannel 10 since before my wife and I moved to Amarillo in early 1995.

For a time, Oliver and I were NewsChannel 10 colleagues. After I left the Amarillo Globe-News in August 2012, I went to work as a freelance blogger for KFDA’s website. I wrote feature stories for the site. One of them involved the use of weather balloons at the National Weather Service station near the city’s international airport. The head weather guy at the NWS station in Amarillo spoke very highly of Oliver’s knowledge of the weather and his professionalism; Oliver spoke highly in return of his NWS colleague.

Oliver brings a sort of down-home folksiness to his broadcasts. It sells greatly in the community he serves. He speaks plainly and, to the best of my knowledge, steers away from meteorologists’ techno-speak we occasionally hear. He manages to tell viewers what the weather is doing without going into a scientific dissertation regarding “hook echoes” and “straight-line wind.”

My wife and I have moved away from the Panhandle. Thankfully, the Internet allows me to stay abreast of goings-on in the city where my wife and I lived for so many years. Dave Oliver’s announcement caught me by surprise.

With that, I want to say, “Get well, ‘Doppler Dave.'” Your legions of fans will await your return to the air.

local news

SW wind = smell of money

feedlot

Dave Oliver is a fine TV meteorologist.

However, the KFDA NewsChannel 10 weather man needs to be a bit more precise when he asks rhetorical questions about wind direction in the Texas Panhandle.

Oliver — aka “Doppler” Dave — was giving a weather report Tuesday night. He informed viewers of the upcoming warm weather we’re going to have for most of the rest of the week.

He was going through the usual stuff, showing viewers maps, cloud flow, talking about “computer models” and so forth.

Then he said the wind pattern was going to shift in Amarillo. He said it would change to a southwesterly flow, meaning the wind would come from southwest of the city.

“You know what that means?” Oliver said, before answering his own question — which was that the wind would be dry and wouldn’t produce much moisture.

No, Dave. That’s not what a southwest wind means to many of us who live in Amarillo.

It means it’s going to stink to high heaven out there.

The southwesterly wind means those feedlots in Hereford and Randall County will send their aroma this way. That’s what happened today, just as Oliver predicted.

The wind shifted. It was dry, all right, just as Oliver said.

It also stunk up the place with the “smell of money.”

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Was that thunder, lightning and rain that kept me up?

It’s been a good while since we had a night like the one we just experienced.

We were up and down like Yo-Yos all night. The lightning would flash. The thunder would roar. The rain would pound the house.

We awoke this morning and found another half-inch of rain in the gauge.

And it was still raining!

OK. The weather forecasters are all a-flutter over the rain. Amarillo’s year-to-date rainfall — I think — is about double the normal amount. It’s about eight times more than we had a year ago at this time.

Is the drought over? Have we turned the corner? Is it time now to start running our residential irrigation systems flat-out, full bore, with not a worry in the world?

Guess again.

The TV weathermen and women aren’t saying anything of the sort. They’re careful to avoid sending the wrong message, although they do seem to get a big carried away with their joy at the rain that’s come our way. El Nino, that Pacific Ocean current phenomenon, has returned, according to Dave Oliver, KFDA-TV NewsChannel 10’s chief meteorologist, and he thinks it’s going to persist through the summer.

El Nino’s effect is to drive moisture from the coast inland, bringing all that rain we’ve been praying for our way.

Let’s not get too excited about the drought. We’ve got that underground aquifer that doesn’t recharge at nearly the rate we’re drawing it down. It’s still going to take centuries for it to fill back up.

Still, let us be thankful and grateful for what we’re getting.

Do you think those prayers we’ve all sent up have been answered?