The Day’s Forecast Shows a Hot Trend

It used to be that everyone talked about the weather but no one did anything about it. That’s changed. Now the Weather Channel airs round-the-clock blizzards of information, newspapers launch daily tsunamis of data and the public splashes happily in every drop.

The other day, for example, millions of Californians basked in electronic bliss as they watched shots of L.A.’s 90-degree sunshine interspersed with chilling views of the Blizzard of ’96. And Easterners, who could look out their windows and experience the blizzard firsthand, likewise preferred to watch it on TV.

In Washington, D.C., Channel 4’s meteorologist Bob Ryan delivered 13 hours of live storm coverage; viewer interest was so strong that executives preempted top-rated daytime soaps so Ryan could explain the station’s weather equipment and answer weather questions from viewers calling in at the height of the storm.

Cable TV’s Weather Channel logged the highest ratings in its 13-year history during the flaky event. About 1.8 million viewing households were tuned in at 9 a.m. Sunday, and the Weather Channel outscored all the TV networks except NBC for three hours prior to that. In other words, the blizzard was a hit.

“We were mesmerized,” says Gayle Portnow, a Manhattan writer who sat “transfixed for hours at the screen, literally watching the snow fall.” Far from feeling bored or isolated, she says, she and her daughter felt “a combination of apprehension and excitement, a kind of high” from the nonstop show of snow.

Weather, never considered a sexy topic of discussion in the past, has recently achieved a certain cache. As science comes closer to conquering other esoteric areas such as space travel, genetic repairs and human organ replacement, weather remains one of the world’s few mysteries. A mystery with the power to surprise, to delight or to kill.

That could account for the bestseller status of National Geographic’s “Cyclone” video. A mix of professional and amateur footage, it shows a family pursued by a whirlwind more vicious than any human attacker, and a survivor who recalls watching with horror as a screaming cow flew by. When NBC aired the video in November, 13.6 million households tuned in.

The Weather Channel has sold 60,000 copies of its “Enemy Wind” video and recently added one called “Tornados ‘95,” along with a CD-ROM and a tornado wall calendar. Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton will cash in on the trend with their upcoming film “Twister.”

David Laskin, author of “Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather” (out from Doubleday this month), says interest in matters meteorological is burgeoning because weather is “truly the last frontier--a classic example of chaos at work. No matter how hard scientists try to predict it, or how many theories they come up with to explain it, the weather always defies.”

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That wild streak in nature lures a variety of types into its spell.

There are the weather fans, who watch or read daily reports with more than average interest, and the weather nuts, who take their own instrument readings, do their own forecasts, even seek out weather that is dangerously intense.

Laskin’s favorite tale in this genre is of “the guy who surfed a hurricane. He went out to Montauk Point on eastern Long Island during a hurricane last autumn and braved death to surf on these enormous 80-foot waves.”

That desire to live life on the edge may sound absolutely insane, Laskin adds, “But I totally understand the impulse that drove him to it, the desire to experience the extreme wrath of weather.”

Storm-chasing is only slightly less hazardous--yet there are apparently increasing hordes of people who plan their vacations to coincide with hurricanes, cyclones or other storms, and then travel to where such weather generally occurs and position themselves to enjoy it--video cameras in hand.

“That can be very high-risk--it’s the most aggressive kind of weather watching,” says Steven D. Steinke, of Belvidere, Ill. He’s been known to grab his own video camera and head for the highest hill to “experience more closely” the thrill of severe lightning and thunder.

Thunderstorms are his very special passion, he explains, because “They are so very individual--something that happens in my immediate area and yet not in the town right next to me. Snowstorms tend to be so much more generalized.”

Steinke, 49, who is general manager of Belvidere’s Daily Republican newspaper, has a home weather computer through which he receives meteorological information via satellite, and a home weather station at which he records daily temperatures, precipitation and wind information. A member of the American Weather Observer Supplemental Observation Network, a national group of weather hobbyists, Steinke is often in touch with like-minded types around the country.

One of those is Adrian Ramillano, 28, of West Los Angeles. He is a college student who built a weather station in the backyard of his parents’ home (“They don’t really understand it”) and edits a newsletter for the 8-year-old California Weather Assn., a group of amateur weather watchers linked with the International Weather Watchers and the American Assn. of Weather Observers, both hobbyist groups.

Ramillano keeps “daily records of high and low temperatures, daily rainfall, wind gust, percentage of sky cover and sky condition.” Three times each day he records the types of clouds in the sky above his yard. Weather nuts may spend thousands to build their weather stations, spend hours glued to the Weather Channel, and may take vacations only with kindred spirits who get a kick out of talking dew points, storm fronts and pressure systems.

Even weather-neutral types may be lured by intriguing visuals. TV stations are now plunking millions of dollars into computers that produce jazzy color satellite and radar images that allow TV weathercasters to act like Moses, shepherding the wind and rain across the map of the land.

Robb Kaczmarek, a meteorologist who recently graduated from the University of Washington, says college never taught him just “how critical the weather is to so many different types of people.” After he hired on at Weather Data, in Wichita, Kan., he learned that “Cement pourers decide whether to pour cement based on weather, railroads base their schedules on how much snow will be on the tracks, cities decide whether to bring in people to salt the streets or machines to plow them.”

Even murderers can be caught with the help of forensic weather information provided by the firm.

AccuWeather, another forecasting firm, employs 70 meteorologists who provide “complete weather product packages” for clients around the world, including TV and radio stations, ski areas, commodities traders and other companies whose profits may depend upon accurate weather predictions.

Even NASA became “weather obsessed,” according to Flight International magazine, after the Challenger disaster 10 years ago was found to be primarily caused by the effect of low launch-pad temperatures on certain shuttle seals. New criteria for launches include humongous lists of weather readings, any one of which may be cause to abort the blastoff.

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TV weather forecasters have benefited from the public’s increased interest in all aspects of weather and its effects. In the two top markets, New York and Los Angeles, they can earn up to $600,000 a year, are highly promoted, and their likability quotient can affect the Nielsen ratings for an entire news team.

Unlike the old days, when Diane Sawyer and David Letterman were TV weather readers who wanted to better themselves by leaving the weather behind, today’s forecasters take pride in their calling and consider weather to be a satisfying career. Of course, there’s the usual competition between East and West. In L.A., Channel 4’s morning weather man, Christopher Nance, says weather here is as important as anywhere else.

“People need surf reports, ski reports, air quality reports. They need to know if they’ll hit fog when they drive to work and how to dress the kids for school. When they get up on a winter morning, it’s dark outside and they haven’t a clue.”

From Washington, D.C., Channel 4’s Bob Ryan cannot hide his grin.

“Real weather” is in the East, he says. “We have it in such sumptuous variety: snow, thunderstorms, heat, humidity. I love weather. And you just don’t get weather out there. That’s why L.A. is a place I would never, quite frankly, want to be.”