Local Weathermen? Really?

Do we really still need local weathermen? Hasn't the whole notion of some jolly guy engaging in light banter with the channel's lead anchor before doing a silly 10-minute "weather report" become a bit outdated? Obviously the concept of waiting until 6PM or 11PM to watch the half-hour news report is outdated on its own, unless you watch WTEN where every lead/co-anchor looks like something out of the 1980's, and thus convinces you that some kind of reverse time portal has taken hold. But I'll leave that argument alone here, and concentrate on the complete uselessness of the local weather guy.

First of all, I only want to know one thing: what is the weather going to be like today, tomorrow, the weekend, etc. I don't care about cold fronts pushing up from the south or a current of low pressure coming off the Great Lakes. Huh? Just tell me: Is it going to rain on Saturday or not. But honestly, I don't even need Steve Caporizzo (although he does do great things for animals, and I love that), Steve Teeling, or Bob Kovachick anymore. I can find weather at my finger tips in ten thousand different places on my phone and/or the Web, without the dumb jokes or eight minutes of meteorology mumbo-jumbo before getting to the only thing I want: the 5-Day Lookout.

Whenever I'm watching Prime Time TV on channels 6, 8, 10, or 13, some local weatherman comes on during commercial breaks and teases his weather report, like, "Is there rain in our weekend weather? Tune into Channel 6 News at eleven to find out." Really? We're teasing the weather report? That's like posting coupons for the Taco Boy outside of Tavern on the Green. Guys, I can get the weather in a nanosecond. I don't need to stay up till almost 11.30P.M. to hear what you have to say about it. Thank God YNN understands that idea, and runs the forecast every ten minutes, sans the mumbo-jumbo.

And this whole deal about the weather people, in any outlet, getting the weather wrong? Are you serious? Meteorology and/or the science of predicting weather is pretty much 100% guaranteed. There's a little thing called technology and science. If the weather report says it's going to snow 4 inches by morning, bet the ranch on it, every time. We live in a world where cloning human beings is probably possible. Trust me, we can read cloud movements.

How local weathermen, and that silly weather screen they read off of, are still in rotation is beyond belief to me. If we must have a weather report on local news, here's how I think it should go:

"Now over to Bob with tomorrow's weather."
"Thanks, Jane, It's going to rain tomorrow. Back to you, Jane."
"Thanks, Bob."

Now that's a weather report.

Brian Huba
12/2/11