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By: Chris Gonsalves
Best of... meteorology
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You can hire an army of stylists and fashion consultants, but let’s face facts. The person who really tells you what to wear is the weatherman. Figuring out whom you can trust when you’re about to risk your new Vera Wang at a garden party is serious business, and, as a result, predicting the weather has become a bit of an arms race for local TV meteorologists. We trained our sights on the forecasters from the network affiliates to see who’s the most dependable.
“TV weather is very competitive here,” says ABC7’s meteorologist John Patrick. In response, his station boasts a 350,000-watt radar system, some cool-looking 3-D graphics, a veteran weather staff, and Patrick himself, the only morning meteorologist in the area with seals of approval from both AMS and NWA. “But really, who cares about credentials when I’m the only weathercaster on TV who has ‘Speedo Cam’ and a ‘Magic Weather Finger’ at his disposal?” jokes Patrick.
Patrick’s peers at NBC2 remain tight-lipped, declining to divulge any part of their secret weather sauce. FOX4’s Jeff Robbins adds cryptically, “Weather is fine. It’s all around us.”
So we turned to Bruce Fixman, a self-professed weather geek and president of WeatheRate in Phoenix. WeatheRate takes data from the 11 p.m. forecast—the one usually done by a station’s chief meteorologist—in 13 markets, including Naples-Fort Myers, and monitors forecast accuracy. WeatheRate’s pick? WINK-TV Channel 11 (CBS).
With a fair bit of modesty, WINK chief meteorologist Jim Farrell says his team took the WeatheRate crown “by a comfortable margin.” But, he concedes “no grading system is perfect.”
—Chris Gonsalves
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