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Weather Reporter
Fri Apr 16, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.
Weather enthusiasts, or "weather nuts" as they are sometimes called, are willing to go
to great extremes to experience the elements. At least that was the case for our
commentator David Laskin.
Picture this scene. A category 3 hurricane is making landfall on the coast of North
Carolina. Residents are evacuating the barrier islands. And there I am, the intrepid
weather journalist, on the scene to do a magazine story about how The Weather
Channel covers a major event. As wind gusts flirt with triple digits I dash outside,
sodden notebook in hand, to watch meteorologist Bill Keneely grimace live at the
camera when - whoosh! - a huge gust catches the top of a pine and crack! the tree
comes down bash! right across the roof the Weather Channel van. Talk about stories
made in heaven.
Luckily, nobody was inside. But I think my glee must have excited the wrath of the
weather gods, because things did not go quite so smoothly for the next story. In my
zeal to investigate a field study of the mysteries of raindrops, I was sitting in the
reeking, freezing, roaring belly of a turboprop research plane that was cruising into a
Pacific winter storm. Just as we hit the first wave of turbulence, the plane took a terrific
jolt and, half a heartbeat later, orange fire flashed at the windows. "What a dream for a
writer!" one of the raindrop specialists shouted into my ashen face. "I've only gotten hit
by lightning three times in 25 years of flying."
I won't get into the rest of the day. Suffice it to say that for future weather stories, I'm
planning to keep both feet firmly planted on the ground.
When staying closer to terra firma, David Laskin writes about weather from his home in
Seattle.
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