Damn you Jerry Taft!

Some may say I have a strange interest in weather forecasters - meteorologists. Actually when I was little, I wanted to be one. I cut up an atlas we had to create all the states and made a huge U.S. map out of it. Unfortunately, every state was not to the same scale, so they didn't fit quite right.

Now as years go by, the weather is still my favorite part of the news. My favorite by far is Jerry Taft on Channel 7 here in Chicago. He makes the weather fun, often goofs up, and is very nonchalant about the whole business of weather. Hardly a forecast goes by when he does not start laughing about something - something the anchors said before his report, something he said wrong, or when his little remote control thing for the weather maps screws up. (He actually gets really angry about that.) He talks about his love of food, his love for golf and makes wisecracks about things said before or after his report.

Molly came up with the phrase, "Damn you Jerry Taft!" when one day I think he failed to predict rain and lo and behold there were the drops when she walked outside. Since then, whenever he predicts weather that will prevent me from going to Indiana to visit her, for instance, that is our phrase of the day - Damn you Jerry Taft! Of course it is said in love!

Of course the real weather forecaster of Chicago that that phrase applies more aptly to is Tom Skilling. Everyone who is familiar with him... raise your hand if you have NO IDEA what the hell he is talking about half the time! Whereas my beloved Jerry Taft gets about a minute and a half of airtime, Skilling gets about SIX minutes. And he uses up every second - with maps and drawings and cold fronts and almanacs and "Did you know that today we received more rain between the hours of 2pm and midnight than on any other April 12 since 1913?" WHO CARES!

And I am not kidding... just last week as I was tuning him out (one has to do that after about 1 minute and 45 seconds of his report) I heard him start talking about Austria. Austria! He was talking about the weather not just here in Chicago, or the Midwest or even the United States. He was broadening our horizons by talking about Europe now!

And I haven't done any kind of scientific study, but I think he is wrong about the weather more than any one else in Chicago! He lives and breathes weather and is still so wrong. How can anyone be as obsessed as he is about something and still get it wrong more often than not?

Oh well, at least after just listening to his forecast tonight I know that later this week a "vigorous arctic outbreak" is coming and "the jet stream is buckling in from the north."