Carson Cooper

This is our entry for Best Newscast 09/11/2012. Please click on the audio link below to listen.

Anyone who lives in the Tampa area for long is sure to become familiar with MacDill Avenue.

And the large airbase and economic engine at the tip of South Tampa is named MacDill AFB. But who is the man behind these names? 

Colonel Leslie MacDill was killed in a plane crash in Washington, D. C., on November 9, 1938.

In conjunction with Ken Burns’ The War, WUSF produced a pair of documentaries in 2007 focusing on two Bay area communities and the residents who served in the military during World War II. Former Tampa Congressman Sam Gibbons, who died this week, is among the veterans featured in this episode of Tampa Goes to War.

It was October 9th, 1996, when Vice Presidential candidates Al Gore and Jack Kemp met for a debate in St. Petersburg's Mahaffey Theater.  

The debate was moderated by PBS Newshour host Jim Lehrer, and was broadcast live ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, C-SPAN, and MSNBC.

WUSF Public Media will offer live coverage of this week's debate between Vice Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Paul Ryan from Danville, Kentucky, this Thursday evening beginning at 8:00.

It was September 26, 1960, when 1,997 freshmen showed up for the very first classes at the University of South Florida.

Among them was Barbara Campbell -- student ID number 00001 -- USF's very first student!

Campbell earned a degree in education in 1963 and spent the next 30 years teaching in Hillsborough County schools.  She retired in 2005.
 

The Tampa Bay area suffered a direct hit by a powerful hurricane on September 25th, 1848.

The so-called Great Gale of '48 destroyed nearly every building at Fort Brooke and was the storm that created John's Pass in Pinellas County and New Pass in Sarasota.

Incredibly no one was killed, but it remains the worst hurricane on record ever to have hit Tampa.

It was a day that started out like any other here in the Tampa Bay Area. 

President Bush was on a two-day swing through the state promoting education reform. 

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays were scheduled to host the Boston Red Sox that night at Tropicana Field.  That game would never be played.

A new exhibit -- "The Royal Inheritance: Dali Works from the Spanish National Collection" -- features 12 paintings in Dali's possession when he died in 1989.  

According to the Dali Museum, the collection contains early still life, nudes, portraits of Gala, stereoptic paintings, and rarely-seen works from 1983 which are considered his final paintings.

The exhibit opens this October and runs through March 2013.

The National Weather Service has issued a number of watches and warnings for the Tampa Bay Area, including a tropical storm warning.

Click HERE for the very latest.
Current National Weather Service Radar

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami say a broad area of low pressure in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be getting better organized.  

Tropical storm watches or warnings may be required for the Northern Gulf Coast later this weekend.  

This system has high chance (90%) of becoming Tropical Storm Debby as it moves slowly northward during the next 48 hours.  Residents of the Florida Peninsula -- including the Tampa Bay Area -- can expect periods of heavy rain this weekend.