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Foul Weather Friends
Mon Apr 07, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook.
"What a downpour!" I raved one torrential afternoon when my teenage daughter Alice and a
friend showed up dripping at our front door. "I can't wait to talk to my weather friends about
this storm."
Bryan: Commentator David Laskin.
"Weather friends?" Alice snickered to her pal. "My dad is soooo weird. I mean, hello, do you
have weather friends? Does anyone else in the universe have weather friends?"
Sure, my other weather friends. Who else are you going to call when a bomb cyclone threatens
to spin off a mega wind storm in the next 12 hours? And who's going to commiserate with you
when high pressure hangs in for endless sunny days and all the really cool storms steer around
you like girls at an eighth grade dance? I count myself extremely lucky because my weather
friends are not just fanatics like me -- but informed fanatics who do weather for a living and
patiently answer all my stupid questions. I doubt this would cut much mustard with my
teeny-bopper daughter, but I'm on a first-name basis with the people who write our area
forecast discussions, I'm constantly on the phone with the local weather pundit who goes on
television when major storms threaten, and I've even hung out with some of The Weather
Channel's highest rated on-camera meteorologists -- OCMs as we call them in biz. Top that
Alice!
Of course my wife thinks we're all insane -- and has even coined the term "meteoromania" to
describe our condition. Let them laugh. Everybody has fair weather friends. But a foul weather
friend -- now that's a friend indeed.
David Laskin revels in the raindrops in Seattle, Washington. He's author of several books on
weather including: "Rains all the Time: A Connoisseur's History of Rain in the Pacific
Northwest." The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory and is
supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
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