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Sunday, November 15, 2026Nov 15

Local TV station back on air after Tuesday storm

Debris is seen after a tree fell on a home on Jarnigan Avenue in North Chattanooga during afternoon thunderstorms on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. There were no injuries reported.
Debris is seen after a tree fell on a home on Jarnigan Avenue in North Chattanooga during afternoon thunderstorms on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. There were no injuries reported.

A local TV station has returned to full broadcast Wednesday afternoon after a storm on Tuesday.

WRCB Channel 3 was kicked off the air and lost power in the studio Tuesday at 4:40 p.m. when heavy wind and rain moved through the Chattanooga area.

Within a minute, generators restored power to equipment in the building, but there was one major problem: there was no video or audio transmission to viewers.

Engineers and IT technicians worked for just over 20 hours to restore the broadcast, which resumed as normal today after 1 p.m.

President and General Manager Tom Tolar said a piece of equipment used to transfer video from the studio to the transmitter had been wiped out sometime during the storm. The transmitter had kept running, but there was no video coming through.