TVNewsCheck has a story outlining the coverage efforts of local TV stations up and down the East Coast.

The article points out the amount of planning news directors needed in order to get ready to cover the storm and initial clean up.

“Everybody left home on Saturday prepared to be gone for five to seven days,” says Michele Butt, news director of Hearst’s NBC affiliate WBAL Baltimore. “You don’t stop covering the storm just because the sun comes out.”

Stations booked hotel rooms, stocked up on petty cash and food supplies and even supplied crews rope to tie down dishes on live trucks.

Throughout the day Monday, local TV news operations in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston ran non-stop storm tracking radar images and news tickers with emergency information and weather updates. Reporters, ma[n]y pulling 12-hour shifts, stood by coastlines and waterways from Ocean City, Md., to New England poised for potentially destructive surges.

Many stations are relying on their station groups to help them give viewers the most comprehensive coverage.  NBC owned stations like WNBC in New York, WCAU in Philadelphia, WRC in Washington, D.C. and WVIT in Hartford, CT, “created a united front of sorts against the storm, sharing resources and content with its corporate news group, including the NBC network, the Weather Channel, MSNBC, CNBC and Telemundo.”

The article points out the even with the slow passing of Hurricane Sandy, stations are poised to cover the huge clean up efforts needed to dig out from the damage inflicted by the storm.

Even as storm coverage continues, news operations already are preparing for the next step: covering the aftermath. WBAL for example, on Monday, already had its chopper waiting in the wings to survey hurricane damage once it’s safe to do so,

Although Baltimore has had its share of major weather events over the last few years — from last year’s Hurricane Irene to massive snow falls the year before — this one is different, Butt says: “It’s been crazy.”

[TVNewsCheck]