My father was a TV news reporter/anchor when I was growing up in Milwaukee, so unlike most kids my age, I watched the 6:00 news every night to see his reports. While it was cool to see my Dad on TV, I was really enthralled with the 3-minute weather segment -- especially when storms were in the forecast.
At that time, WITI-TV6 had Ward Allen and his puppet sidekick Albert the Alleycat doing the weather. It was campy. It was creepy. It was weird.
And it made it very difficult to take the weather seriously.
Then, Channel 6 hired a meteorological upstart by the name of Tom Skilling. Skilling was a weather academic who took the science of meteorology very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he would have daily run-ins with Newsroom management over that damn puppet. It wasn't long before Skilling issued an ultimatum -- either the puppet goes or he goes.
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| Skilling was not as happy as he looked. |
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| An early newspaper ad |
But in his brief time at WITI, Skilling hooked me. He didn't just forecast the weather, he explained the weather. He was a teacher who wanted all of his viewers to understand the science behind pressure systems, fronts, jet streams, troughs, disturbances, dry lines, Omega highs, Alberta Clippers, Texas panhandle hooks and everything else that impacted the weather in southeastern Wisconsin.
While I never formally studied meteorology (Carroll College didn't have a program, but offered me way too much financial assistance to turn them down), my inner weather geek never went away. I was a closet wannabe meteorologist, reading books, watching The Weather Channel for hours on end, and later, studying on the internet. To this day, I love testing my own interpretations of weather models and long-range forecasts, especially in the winter.
So Rippeology is a way to stay connected with the Skilling in me, put my forecasts to the test publicly, and live out a dream that went dormant but never died.
Welcome.
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