Cindy Dahl was one of Washington's most popular weather forecasters of the mid-1950s. At WTTG she drew map features on Plexiglas, a common gimmick during that period.
November 30, 1998 transcript # 262-1
Subject(s): TV meteorology
Title: A Failed ForecastHi, this is Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory for The Weather Notebook. Today, commentator Bob Henson talks about perhaps one of the shortest careers in weather history.
"When I grew up in Oklahoma City, my friends' heroes were Willie Mays and Bart Starr, Neil Armstrong and John Lennon. My hero, though, was Jim Williams, the weatherman on WKY-TV. Jim was always cool and collected, even in the face of severe weather, which seemed to happen almost every night from March till June. Jim never broke a sweat when he interrupted a show with the latest weather bulletin. In my book, he was the epitome of cool. I followed his forecasts through the years and by junior high, I knew that someday, I too, would do the weather on TV.
My big break came as a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma, where the campus TV station had a nightly cable newscast. I jumped at the chance to do the weather. How hard could it be, after all? I knew each of the state's 77 counties by name, and I could explain anything from tornadoes to dust storms. But on the night of my debut, my confidence melted like snow on an April morning. And it didn't help that I wasn't able to point to a real map, because the graphics were added electronically. Instead, I had to gesture at a blue screen while looking sideways at a monitor to see where the fronts were. Still, I made it through. And I actually thought I'd done so with some amount of flair. But when I saw the videotape, I was mortified. Each time I'd paused for a second or two to collect my thoughts, it looked like an eternity on screen. And my hand pointed to Weleetka when I meant Wetumka. My smile was about as natural as that of someone facing a firing squad. It was painfully obvious that I wasn't ready for prime time yet."
Bob Hensen from Boulder, Colorado, is a meteorologist, though not on TV, and he did write a book about television weather casting, the only one that I know of, and you can check it out at our web site, which is weathernotebook.org.
Cindy Dahl was one of Washington's most popular weather forecasters of the mid-1950s. At WTTG she drew map features on Plexiglas, a common gimmick during that period.
To purchase Bob Hensen's book.
"Television Weathercasting: A History"
(McFarland, 1990, ISBN# 0899504922)
Available from McFarland and Co., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640.
Phone: (336) 246-4460, or toll-free (for ordering) 1-(800) 253-2187.
$38.50 plus $4 shipping per copy