Breaking a World Record

It was an exciting week here at TWC, we were attempting to break a world record for the largest interactive weather report. The previous record held by the BBC, in the UK, who had 261 schools submit the temperature. To break the record we needed over 261 schools to submit a temperature reading from midday in their playground through to The Weather channel and we had to compile the data and broadcast the results. A project 6 months in the making, schools across Australia had been registering for months and vying to have the Weather Channel crew and senior meteorologist Dick Whittaker at their school to help them record the temperature. Wednesday 18th of August was the day marked down for the attempt and Dick Whittaker had flown to Rockhampton to help the students at Stanwell State Public School take the temperature in their playground.






By 11am it was all systems go. Chris Sheedy, the official adjudicator from Guiness World Records had arrived and was overseeing the entire report from go to whoa. The temperatures started coming in thick and fast from around the country. By 2pm it was clear we had enough data from enough schools to have a real shot at the record. But we still needed to get the data into an on-air report and screen it on the channel to win the record for ourselves. Number crunchers worked hard to input all the temperatures into our specially prepared map while Chris Sheedy looked on. The teams worked down to the wire and pulled it all together with minutes to spare. Ken Heatley had the huge job of presenting The Big Report with all 502 temperatures and he got through the lot with flying colours. The report was broadcast and Chris Sheedy proudly announced that The Weather Channel and 502 schools across the nation had trounced the record.





To watch The Big Report go to www.weatherchannel.com.au/bigreport