Ask Me About Being a Weatherman

[SneakyFerret]

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What schooling did you do?

Are you afraid that you will be replaced by a hot spanish woman soon?

its basically the easiest job ever right?

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4 year Atmospheric/Oceanic Sciences degree at University of Wisconsin.

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When did you graduate? My girlfriend was in this program.

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May 2007. What's her name?

[SneakyFerret]

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Are there people on TV that don't have degrees? I can't imagine some of the people that are weathermen actually have degrees in the field.

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I'm sure that there are some. The news directors are just looking for a final product. If you can go on tv, look good, sound good, and tell the people what they need to hear, then you probably have a good chance of succeeding in this business.

[ChuckyB]

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I wish someone would actually track this.

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There are people that already track this.

Forecast Advisor

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Thanks for that link. That's pretty cool.

[KUJustin]

I heard once that forecasts beyond 3 days are fairly worthless, and beyond 5 days are almost pure guesswork. I also heard weather guys hate putting out forecasts that long range, but the public demands it so their bosses make them do it. Any truth to this?

[SneakyFerret]

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I heard once that forecasts beyond 3 days are fairly worthless, and beyond 5 days are almost pure guesswork. I also heard weather guys hate putting out forecasts that long range, but the public demands it so their bosses make them do it. Any truth to this?

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Yes. I'd say that any specific forecast over 5 days is fairly worthless. Although, we can give a general idea of the temperature/precipitation trends, we can't tell you exactly what time it's going to rain, or exactly what the temperature will be. We can get fairly close though.

[Tablerat]

Great thread.

How much on-air experience did you have in college? What was your first report in Lima like?

When the anchors throw it over to you, does your heart rate go up? Have you always been a good public speaker or what techniques have you used to improve/get over camera jitters?

Is there constant chatter in your ear during your forecast or is it silent? Has the prompter gone down during one of your forecasts yet?

Do you attend to your appearance more than your wife? Or does makeup do a good job for that?

Are they sending you out on live shots for the morning show? Or human interest stories? Are you trying to come up with some unique segment, e.g. adopt an animal?

Are the other weathermen supportive or do you not interact with them much?

Are you starting to get recognized out in public now?

Thanks!

[SneakyFerret]

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Great thread.

How much on-air experience did you have in college? What was your first report in Lima like?

When the anchors throw it over to you, does your heart rate go up? Have you always been a good public speaker or what techniques have you used to improve/get over camera jitters?

Is there constant chatter in your ear during your forecast or is it silent? Has the prompter gone down during one of your forecasts yet?

Do you attend to your appearance more than your wife? Or does makeup do a good job for that?

Are they sending you out on live shots for the morning show? Or human interest stories? Are you trying to come up with some unique segment, e.g. adopt an animal?

Are the other weathermen supportive or do you not interact with them much?

Are you starting to get recognized out in public now?

Thanks!

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1. I had absolutely no on air experience before this job. I've always felt comfortable in front of the green screen because of my internship, and all the practice I had, but my first day at the desk was a massacre.... I didn't know which camera to look at, how to time my segment... that kind of stuff. It was rough. But since then, things have been smooth.

2. I've never been a good public speaker. It takes some guts to go in front of a camera and talk to thousands of people. Basically, the more you do it, the less nervous you are. The less nervous you are, the better your segments become.

3. I don't have a thing in my ear... only the anchors use it. I have the option to, but the floor director is next to the camera giving me time cues, so I don't need one.

Here's a big point that I'm not sure people know or not: Weather Anchors ADLIB! Regular anchors/sports people use prompters. We don't. Everything you see is 100% live and adlibed. We create a show with a bunch of graphics, and basically go out there and talk about them. So if you see your local weatherman screw up, give him a break. If you see your local news anchor screw up, then they're a moron who can't read.

4. I take my dress pretty seriously compared to most, I'd say. I like to look good. I can't stand wearing makeup, but I have to because of the dark color of my facial hair. I'll usually just put it on 15 min before the show, and take it off right after . I hate the greasy/gay feeling of it on my face.

5. So far ,I haven't been freelancing any stories/segments. When I report (which all anchors have to do in small markets [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]...), it's usually some really boring story that's assigned to me. I have some ideas (cooking segments.... music segments... etc...), but I won't bring them up quite yet because I just started like 2 months ago.

6. I have yet to interact with other weathermen, but I'm sure that in a small market like this, where most are young, that I would get along just fine with them.

7. I live in a smaller town 30 min south of Lima, so I have yet to be recognized in public. Plus I'm new. My Co-Anchors say that they get recognized all the time.

[Toro]

Is it really harder to forecast weather in New England. I think it was Mark Twain who said "if you don't like the weather there wait a minute".

[SneakyFerret]

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Is it really harder to forecast weather in New England. I think it was Mark Twain who said "if you don't like the weather there wait a minute".

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Some places are obviously more difficult to forecast for than others. For instance, Las Vegas: easy. Pacific Northwest: hard. New England: kinda hard, but nowhere near as hard as the pacific northwest/colorado.

[killsadie]

do you feel a gay person could ever be a successful weather reporter?