When the Weather Was a Joke
Weather is serious business. Getting the forecast right and getting that info to the public can often be a matter of life and death. And getting it right is possible now because today’s weather forecasts are remarkably accurate and detailed. But until the last couple of decades, about the best a weather forecaster could do was tell you what the temperature was expected to be and whether or not it was likely to rain for the next day or maybe two (and they often got that wrong).
People still needed and wanted that information, though, so television stations included the weather in their programming. But in those pre-tech days, the weather segment could be kind of boring, and television stations struggled to make their weather segment different from those of other stations in town. (We’re talking about a time when there was no national weather channel, only local stations giving mostly local weather.)
In those days the people giving the forecasts were generally not meteorologists. They were “weathermen,” or if they were women, they were typically called “weather girls.” Oh, and it gets worse. In order to spice up the weather segment, these “weather girls” often wore tight sweaters and were “real lookers,” to use the parlance of that less enlightened time.
The weathermen, on the other hand, were often comedians. Weather forecasts were the comic relief of the evening news.
Here’s an example: A guy riding a unicycle and carrying an umbrella rolls into view wearing a silly grin and a sign around his neck that says, “Watch out for falling water!” Some weathermen worked with puppets. Cap’n Sandy, a TV weatherman in Savannah, Georgia, had a stuffed bird (Wilbur the weather bird) and Calamity Clam, a mechanical clam from whose snapping shell the Cap’n would snatch cards announcing upcoming high and low tides.
When weather forecasters did get more or less serious about the weather, they used markers to draw frontal boundaries on maps, or they pinned up cardboard cutouts of clouds or big smiling suns. Very low-tech. Nonetheless, it let viewers know as much as anyone knew about what to expect (well, what maybe to expect) from the next day’s weather. And it gave everyone a few laughs.
It seems silly when you compare it to today’s satellite images and continuously updated weather radar. But to be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing a talking parrot on the weather segment once in a while.
’til next time,
Avery
PS — Sorry if you missed me last week. I had technical difficulties.(And guess what? This time it wasn’t my fault!) I think we’re all sorted now, so I should be back on the regular schedule. — Avery