A sudden line of strong thunderstorms swept through the Mid-Ohio-Valley Friday, catching many residents off-guard.

The storms raced southeast across Ohio, arriving just at 2:45 p.m., but they couldn't outrace the new WTAP Weather Watcher program.

From the moment the first Severe Thunderstorm Watch was issued for the area, those counties in the watch area were displayed on personal computer desktops.

When the Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued for Wood county, the information was displayed in color coding AND crawled across the bottom of the personal computer screen, providing the best, fastest notification to the public possible.

The Weather Watcher program is a free program downloadable from the WTAP Website at WTAP.com

So far, more than 2000 people have downloaded the program in the valley, with hundreds more expected as a result of the positive performance during the severe weather sweeping the valley this May.