You Mean Radar Wasn't Always in Color?

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Yesterday's June 8 post ("TV Weather Grew Up," see below) prompted a comment expressing surprise that radar wasn't always in color.
Prior to 1976, all weather radar was in black and white and had to operated in a completely darkened room.  Because the radar image faded very quickly, we made radar "tracings" (which is what I am doing in the photo above).
I kept one of the radar tracings from June 8 that I used as a "cheat sheet" when I was on the air doing a weather advisory.  At this point, the tornado watch was out from two until 8pm and several rapidly developing storms were developing west and southwest of Oklahoma and were up to level 3 (out of six) intensity and rapidly increasing to severe thunderstorm intensity. It was the southernmost of those storms that would cause the first of the Oklahoma City tornadoes (pictured in the original post).

The viewers saw just black and white blobs with little in the way of geographic references -- they had to take my word that the storm was near Chandler (for example).  That is why color radar, which came along in 1976, was such a revolution.  Viewers could see easy-to-interpret radar for themselves and determined what was going to affect their area of interest.

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