Our weather has never been crazier than in the last year or so. Do you ever remember such severe and tragic tornado damage? Isn’t thunder louder? Lightning is even scarier. Moss is growing on the north side of my body! So, my rain hat is off to local TV weathercasters. Sure, they sometimes don’t get it right, which means enduring endless jokes that start with “Wish I had a job making big bucks and getting it wrong so often...” When I was anchoring news, I must confess to introducing our weather guy or gal many times with a sarcastic, “Well, I was out this morning shoveling some of the ‘dusting’ you predicted yesterday.”
I learned how important weather is to St. Louisans once or twice when Channel 4 was without a weathercaster for a while. I was asked to fill in. Once or twice, to save time, I would leave off saying the barometric pressure, which was clearly indicated with a graphic on the screen. Then came a barrage of phone calls at the end of the newscast from viewers complaining that my weathercasts were insufficient. “Where was the barometric pressure?” they’d ask. “It was right there on your screen!” I'd answer. Their collective response? “But you didn’t say it!” Why the heck do people care about the barometric pressure anyway?
I’ve been at the epicenter of the evolution of St. Louis TV weathercasting, from the no longer politically correct “Beautiful Weathergirl” in Diane White, to the “Handsome Mellow-Voiced Weatherguy” in Howard DeMere, to the costumed “Corky the Clown” in multi-talented Clif St. James. Whatever they put up on our screens back then, we accepted as gospel. But I don’t think they had the credible authority to order us to take shelter in the bathtub or basement.
I remember introducing the weatherperson on TV in the mid-’70s, at the birth of the then-new Doppler Radar. My pessimistic prediction was that it was simply a fad. It will go the way of the weather vane, I grunted. And when TV weatherfolk started talking about NEXRAD, I clucked, “See, I told you so.”
But lo and behold, Doppler has grown up. It probably mated with NEXRAD and begot pinpoint accuracy that grew by leaps and bounds. I am dazzled by the crop of local meteorologists—even when they tag-team endlessly and interrupt my regular programming for a whole evening. When those professionals can tell me a particular line of dangerous thunderstorms will hit my street in exactly 11 minutes and 17 seconds, I’m impressed. The precision allows me plenty of time to casually pour a nice Manhattan, before sauntering with my hardhat and flashlight to the catacombs of my building. I used to be of little faith. Now, consider me a convert.
I can’t ever forget the instance when a devastating tornado swept through North St. Louis County while we were doing the 10 o’clock news. My crew and I were dispatched to the scene as soon as I said goodnight to my viewers. When we got to the torn-to-smithereens subdivision, we found a ragged man climbing out of the rubble of what was once his nice house. He said as he approached my crew and me, “Julius, your weatherman really f—ed us tonight…” With that, he took a swig from a bottle of Old Crow. He then thrust the bottle of whisky at me. Without a word, and without even bothering to wipe off the mouth of the bottle, I turned it up and took a nice bonding gulp. St. Louisans swear by their weathercasters. I somehow felt responsible for his loss.
