At one point I was obsessed with the weather. I had moved from California to study literature in Massachusetts, and I ignored everyone who told me it would be a rough transition. I shouldn’t have. Massachusetts stunned me with autumns that made trees sizzle with color, as though they were on fire; it caught me off guard with a summer sun that beat down on me with deadpan, relentless intensity. It bewildered me with long, macabre winters that made me miss class because I hadn’t budgeted enough time to dig my car out of icy snowdrifts.
I started watching the weather every night. I was addicted to it the way some people become addicted to soap operas. It was grand entertainment. How many ways can you say “Partly cloudy with chance of showers”?
You can say “Partly cloudy with a chance of showers.”
Or: “Partly cloudy with chance of showers.”
I began to wonder how difficult it would be to change careers. I wanted to be a weatherman. Did you actually need to have some sort of background in science so you could track weather patterns and draw conclusions? Or could you just wear a tie and read text off a teleprompter that’s beamed to you from some all-purpose weather center? I hoped for the second option. I would simply ask to not wear a tie. I hate ties.
Sometimes I practiced. I said to someone I knew, “Tomorrow might very well be warmer. There’s a thermal updrift in the equinox that may collide with a storm front.”
He replied, “I think it would be good if you didn’t talk to me for a while.”
Still, for the most part everyone humored me. After all, there was a more obvious reason to follow the weather obsessively: local weatherwoman Mish Michaels usually wore red and was always upbeat. Practically everyone I knew (including women) admitted, “Yeah, it’s good to watch the weather because you can watch Mish.”
I wasn’t fooling everyone, though. At some point, during a lengthy rant about the weather, my friend interrupted: “Don’t you have a stack of papers to grade? Stop procrastinating.”
It got worse. I found myself in an IRC chat room devoted to local weather. And you know who joined us? Someone who claimed to be a local TV weatherperson. In fact, he was chatting with us inbetween going on TV to do the weather segments. Or so he claimed. Someone typed, “Prove it. Next time you go on, say that the Boston #weather channel rules!”
He replied “No, I can’t do that. But I can say that the storm will be crashing down, and I’ll put an emphasis on crashing so you know I’m on the level.”
I watched the local news intently. A sandy haired, nerdy looking man stepped in front of the camera. Why, it was none other than local weatherman Todd Gross.
Todd said, “Over the weekend, you’ll see that the storm will come crashing down.” He made a swooping gesture with his hands.
He finished the segment and came back online. I typed excitedly at him, “That was great! How do you become a weatherman, anyway?”
He said, “Usually you need to be a meteorologist. That gives you a background in science. so you can track weather patterns and draw conclusions.”
I said, “So Mish Michaels has all that?”
He said, “Well…some of them have the ‘look’ and don’t need to become a meteorologist.”
Okay. So maybe I had some challenges there. I could offer a kind of boyish charm, if you were drunk enough, but I sure as hell wasn’t Mish Michaels. Still, my obsession with the weather continued undeterred.
None of this was about procrastinating my studies, my friend’s opinion notwithstanding. I think it was more about trying to assert some kind of control over my existence. I wanted to make myself feel better about the amorphous, logic-deprived environment of graduate school, where I was working long hours but had no idea if I’d ever get a job. If I could control the mysterious East Coast weather, I could control my mysterious East Coast life. I think this is how I felt, because I gradually got used to Boston and forgot about the weather—although I was glad to eventually return to California and begin a process of thawing out that ended sometime last month.
Still, yesterday I felt the faintest hint of my obsession return. I stepped outside and saw that it was pouring down rain. In California. In June. I drove to work with torrents lashing my windshield. Typically, all the other California drivers thought they were Aquaman and went speeding down the highway at 80 miles an hour. I think I saw pedestrian body parts flying around. I thought, “Maybe it’s not too late to get that scientific background after all. I can analyze patterns. I can draw conclusions. I can figure out how to look good in red.”
David Letterman started off as a weatherman. I remember reading an interview with him in which he commiserated with his former colleagues, saying that being a weatherperson was a “dead end job.” I don’t believe him. I bet when it’s late at night and everyone’s asleep, he pulls out the old weatherboard and stands in front of it and basks in that kind of control and power that even ratings and fame and millions of dollars can’t give him.
Partly cloudy with chance of rain.
Partly cloudy with chance of rain.
I’m still positive that I’d be a natural.
It’s easy to get on the local news - just sleep with someone. Works every time.
Partly cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
(Best children’s book EVER.)
Yes great kid’s book.
My grandmother was obsessed with the weather. The weather portion of the news would come on and she would say “Shhh, it’s the weather.” And we all had to remain silent until sports. My 24 hour weather channel would have been like porn to her.
Great post.
I heard that the weather folk are the only fully dressed news folk. The others are wearing sweatpants behind the desk.
You’d be like the Steve Martin character in L.A. Story. That would we AWESOME. Go for it still!
growing up in LA we had Fritz on 4. He ROCKED, funny as hell and scientific to boot. I have trouble watching the weather now because no one else around here is as entertaining, and therefore I went out yesterday in a light sundress and heels, not anticipating the downpour crashing down on us all day. The sacrifices I make for aesthetic fulfillment....
and as for body parts: eurgh. At least yesterday it was just raining rain around here.
Greg, I’m behind you all the way on this. But you’ve left out one key element, you know. The HAIR. Do you have hair that never moves? That’s crucial for ANY anchorperson, but particularly for those doing weather. A casual move to get some hair out of your eyes could be misinterpreted as impending tornadoes.
I think we need a few good close-ups of the head to make a decision.
The double doppler radar gets my juices flowing.
i think it is very brave of you to admit your participation in weather chat sites. i wouldn’t.
I was a weather-girl in the Air Force. I used to say, “This is Heather with the weather!” (Yes, it’s cheesy...and that was the point.) Here’s an interesting tidbit for you: if the weatherman says there’s an 80% chance of rain, what he’s really saying is that 80% of you folks for whom he’s forecasting will, indeed, get rain, and 20% of you will not.
I know, Sach--but this was long ago and during a rough period, so I feel pretty distanced from the sheer lameness of it now. And Mir, I don’t have enough hair left to even participate in such a litmus test.
Dirty Dan says, “heard that the weather folk are the only fully dressed news folk.” I was interviewed on a local TV channel. Ed, the news anchor, interviewed me. He was wearing a tie, blue dress shirt, blue blazer with brass button, calico bermuda shorts and well-worn, dirty tennis shoes with no socks. Folks seeing him on screen sitting behind his desk could never tell.
Greg says, he could be a weatherperson. I don’t believe it. He’d probably look deadpan at the camera and say something like, Now this storm looks like it’s going to last 40 days and 40 nights and he’d create a panic as everybody ran into Walmart to buy an ark.
Personally, I’ve always loved George Carlin’s idea of delivering the weather, you know, all hippy-dippy like… “mostly dark tonight with wide scattered light towards morning”
New Englanders are obsessed with weather, and it has to come from the local guys. We will watch the Weather Channel but only for a second opinion after tuning into Dick or Harvey or Todd or Mich (back in Boston after a brief stint on the Weather Channel). We know all the details of “the Perfect Storm”, even if we didn’t read the book, because we watched that weather forecast. Knowing the temperature for the next two days and how it will affect the Sox is equally as important as knowing your own name.
God, I am such a neomaxiezoomdweebie.
Partly cloudy, 67 degrees in this fair city.
if you think yesterdays mist was “torrential” you’ve been in california too long.
First, I was SURE that chat with the weatherman was going to end MUCH differently. (cough)
Second, why is everyone overlooking the most important thing about being a weatherman? The NAME. You’d need to change your name for sure. Like Howie Gregland for Slappy Howgreg. It’s the key to good weather.
Lastly, here in the ATL (PEACE OUT, A-TOWN!! AIIIGHT!!) the weather is very easy. What was it doing in Birmingham 3 hours ago? Yeah, that’s headed this way.
cw is right: the name is key. We’ve got a local guy named Larry Sprinkle, which I submit as the nadir of meteoronymy. Dare to follow you’re dreams!
Moving to California has reduced my stock mindless stranger chatter. Anywhere else but here, the number one thing you talk about to strangers in the weather. The receptionist at the dentist office, the bartender, the co-worker you don’t know very well… Now I don’t know what to say to these people. I actually have to make real conversation.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Spencer Christian on the local news here. I used to watch him all the time on Good Morning America and finding him out here made it seem like I already had a friend in SF. Sad, isn’t it?
So you were one of the people on the freeway yesterday who cause a traffic jam by going 20 just because it’s raining? I may have to hurt you.
Since I moved to Colorado, my best friend has taken to informing me that I’ve taken to informing her about all the precipitation that has fallen since I last talked to her. She says I’m obsessed with water now. Of course, because of the drought, when I first moved here people said things like, “remember that time when it rained?”
It rained a bit today, hard for a brief period. It’s cloudy now, so perhaps we’ll get more.
And Greg, I remember when you came back for a visit from California and asked if we were going to take “Massachusetts Avenue” somewhere. That’s when we knew you’d become a Californian again.
Well, if you’re really into weather, you can do what I do, and download weatherbug (http://www.weatherbug.com) onto your screen. Everytime I sit down at my computer, weatherbug gives me an “update” on the local and national weather. It’s quite addictive.
From my experience, you don’t need a degree because it’s so ambiguous. Why don’t they just say “partly something with a chance of whatever.”
i think holley’s phrase “the nadir of meteoronymy” might have to become a blog tagline.
i wish you’d come to france while i was there. you’d have seen that the french are even more *obsédés* by the weather than new englanders native and migratory. *la météo* is a mandatory topic of conversation no matter where you are or how long it’s been doing whatever it’s currently doing. a couple summers ago *la canicule* was the first, and sometimes only, thing anyone talked about. to date that heat wave will stop a conversation and people get almost nostalgic. “ah oui, la canicule ... je m’en souviens.” they say it with pride, like meterologic québecois.
(p.s. so THAT’S what you were doing on irc all that time.)
Hey Greg --
I work in TV and next time you’re in NYC, feel free to drop me a line. We’ll put you onset at the green screen and let you geek out with your storm fronts all ya like!
Personally, I think all TV weather forcasters should strive for the panache of Steve MArtin in LA Story.
And Papa… Yes, the newsmen wear no pants. I worked with a sports guy in California who wouldn’t wear shoes. Takes all kinds.
--LAZ
You would remind me of the weather man in LA Story played by Steve Martin. You could do So. Cal Weather, its 72 and sunny…
That last part reminded me of either Dustin Hoffman in Rainman or Leo DiCaprio in The Aviator.
The wave of the future.
The WAVE of the future.
The wave of the FUTURE.
my favorite subplot involving mish michaels was when she was semi-romantically semi-linked to nik carter because, i think, they were both famous and black. my recollection was that she was WAY out of his league because weatherpeople are hottt, whereas the afternoon drive-time guy on the angry teenager radio station sucks. so, there it is.
and if you want to go where weather is serious, you should try vermont. there was a blocking system in the region this spring that, and this is an NPR-certified quote, “is unlike anything we’ve seen since we started recording weather.”
do your topics and key words have anything to do with the google ads that come up on your site? I’ve seen two on geese for weather carreer websites. http://www.skyeyeweather.com.
or maybe this will work ...
<a href="http://www.skyeyeweather.com/">some weather thingie>
Yes, in theory the Google ads pick up content and position themselves accordingly. In reality, much comedy is usually prevalent.
I once stood behind Meteorologist Todd Gross at the bank, a few years ago. The man’s about five feet nothing, I kid you not.
Mish Michaels--oh, man, Greg, you just gave me the worst flashback. I *loved* that woman. Where the hell did she go? Is she on The Weather Channel now or something? Because I don’t have cable. Damn it.
Extremely funny post, by the way--like I needed to tell you that. You see Batman Begins yet? I came by here expecting your review. I just saw it myself.
Amusingly enough, I just got back from it to see your comment. I liked it. Although the Waynes didn’t see an opera--it was Zorro, dammit!!! Uh, okay. Got that out of my system. It was a good flick. I liked Liam’s Ras, and such.
Hi.
I came across this page googling Mish, who has been a great friend of my sister’s and mine since childhood. Great to see that her work is appreciated, but how could you be obsessed with her and yet think she’s unqualified? For God’s sake, she majored in Meteorology at Cornell University, got her Masters at Harvard, and has a bazillion other well-deserved honors. Look at her bio before assuming that someone attractive can’t be successful on their own merits. It would be the decent thing to update the post in case someone else should come across it and unknowingly spread such an undeserved smear. BTW, she and her husband had a baby last week. Congrats, Mish!
I just came across this… YOU GO MIKE. I was just about to comment that Mish is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever known. Her commitment to science and her educational background is totally impressive. I worked with her in the 90s when I was still in Boston and have remained a friend and fan throughout the years. Your blog is cool but please do your research.