My sons were athletes in high school. Of the vernacular I picked up from them, is usage of the term JV to categorize someone who is 'not the best' at something, but gamely playing anyway.
In Southern California, the weathermen are JV.
There is a complete role reversal here in Oklahoma. We get newscasters that appear 'just out of school' who quickly up market to another job. My guess is that they stay about two years in the Tulsa market before they are gone. In the TV business, it's very common to start out at smaller stations and work your way up to a major metropolitan market. Although our news talent appears young and fresh faced, our weathermen are multi-degreed professionals with a deep knowledge and respect for mother nature.
In SoCal, it was just the opposite. The newscasters were mature professionals at the top of their game, and the weathermen were wet behind the ears youngsters just out of school. When I mentioned this to DH during a San Diego weather forecast, he just commented, "how hard is it to say, 'sunny and 70 degrees'?"
Which made me realize that the good weathermen come to Tulsa because we have interesting weather here. In Tulsa, they might get vans full of storm chasers at their beck and call. They have the ability to command multiple doppler radars and aggregate data to write papers and articles for professional journals. Our weathermen are Varsity not JV.
In San Diego, they had baby weathermen and mature newscasters, here we have the opposite. Our weathermen are mature professionals who don't want to up-market. They are right where they want to be. Right where the weather is epic and the money is available for advanced equipment.
All the local weathermen pegged this late winter storm. All of our local weathermen, on all the local channels, had plenty of time to see the moisture building and the low pushing through. They all called it. We had plenty of time to stock the shelves and stack the wood before the storm hit. It's nice not to have to depend on JV weathermen.
--Sandee Wagner
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4 comments:
I'm a weather forecaster, Sandee, but I'm not Varsity or JV. I'm a cheerleader from the school of WT forecasting.
When all the stations said, Snow, snow, snow! I yelled, No! No! No! Not gonna happen. No mo'. It won't snow.
All the cheers in the world didn't help. Guess that's why they call Wishful Thinking. LOL
I indulge in that kind of weather prediction, too, Susan. I'm a believer in denial. "Eight inches snow? No way. Ain't ever going happen." Even as the flakes fall around me.
I read a quote from a long-term weather guy in New Orleans when he retired. (He was like our Don Woods.) He said he loved his job. Half the time he said it was gonna be hot and humid, and the other half it was warm and humid, with an occasional cool and foggy and humid thrown in. And if he was partly wrong, nobody cared. What's not to love?
Susan,
I enjoy the visual of you cheerleading for anything! I guess I could have used a different verbal metaphor, but Varsity vs. JV just seemed to do the trick. spw
Marilyn,
I truly believe that there are wopping loads of the country where the weather forecasters are JV. Like Arizona. Hot and sunny. SoCal. Warm and Sunny. And now New Orleans. Hot and humid. If you live in one of those places, you don't really need the A-Team on weather, do you? But in OK we need the first team. We really do. spw
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