The Sound Of Meteorology Departments Closing

Used to be that meteorology meant studying weather patterns, knowing basic and advanced models and
units, the conservation laws, doing math, understanding midlatitude synoptic systems and vorticity, atmospheric composition, things like that.  That's what meteorologists did.

Now it's about bleached teeth, above average breasts, arm waving, using 'doppler' as a noun instead of an adjective, and my favorite new word, 'futurecast' ('forecast' is so 20th century!).

An emergent meteorological skill this year is the use of improbably long strings of prepositions before their weather object and making cosy, temporizing references to formerly public days of the week as time periods now mine, all mine.

The award for the Longest Preposition String in a Weather Report goes to Mr. Kaj Goldberg of the KCAL Channel 9 / CBS2 studios in Los Angeles, California, with the most astonishing entry of all submitted: a fully, five membered, prepositional string, one element longer than any other entrant's:

Whoa! Where are my sunglasses?

"Out over up in through the high desert, we have thunderstorms moving in from the east."  Congratulations, Kaj!

(Mr. Goldberg is tall, handsome, has a killer sun tan and is an avid surfer.)

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Our next award is for Most Personalized Weather Forecast.  We are proud to announce that the award goes to Ms. Evelyn Taft, also of the KCAL Channel 9 / CBS2 studios in Los Angeles, California, for her persistent and almost not annoying references to my personally-owned days of the week - 'your Friday', 'your Tuesday', etc.; my personally-owned times of day: 'your morning', 'your afternoon', etc.; and her insistence that I'm 'heading into' each of these time periods: "As we head into your Thursday", "heading into your Sunday", etc.  Ow, my head!  I didn't realize how hard my Thursdays are!

Congratulations Evelyn!

(Ms. Taft is gorgeous and blonde, wears a stunning smile and occasionally constructs a completely cogent sentence.)

Evelyn Taft, Dancing With The Charts

Ms. Taft has also won our coveted Hand Gestures Award, for her exceptionally suave and accurate nightly wavings at the green screen weather maps, almost adequately compensating for her unintelligible, extemporaneous ramblings and attempted transitions from the previous 'news' story.

Expert but anonymous opinion has it that her lovely and constantly moving hands and arms have had formal and extensive Polynesian Dance and Trade Show Gesture training, although this has not been confirmed.

Beyond her unremittingly melodramatic decrescendi and ritardandi at sentence ends, Evelyn has a unique gift in knowing how to use the phrase 'as well' at both the beginning and ending of almost every phrase she utters. Personally, I have counted sixteen in a single weather segment.  But remember, this not an official count; the Repeat Phrases award is a new category for next year's competition, not this year's.

Lastly, we should note that when this amply and well-certified meteorologist says, "We'll be warming it up for you on the weekend," we recognize that finally, some one isn't just talking about the weather (we believe that may be what's going on here), she's doing something about it!

By an overwhelming majority, Ms. Evelyn Taft has been voted our overall champion Meteorologist for 2013!