Many of us have someone who influenced us in our choice of career. Perhaps a teacher, or someone in that field who was a mentor to us. With me, it was a certain TV meteorologist.
As mentioned elsewhere on this site, I became interested in the weather at a young age. At that time there were few sources of weather information. No internet, no Weather Channel, etc. To feed my hunger for weather information, I relied on the nightly television newscasts. Unfortunately, many TV stations relegated the weather to last place in the lineup, giving it very little air time and having it presented by some clown who didn't know a low pressure area from his belly button. But Channel 3 in Cleveland was different. They had a 90-minute evening newcast of which 60 minutes was devoted to local news, sports and weather. The weatherman was Wally Kinnan. He really knew weather, and with the length of the newscast, he had the time to talk about it. His presentations were usually at least 10 minutes long...a lot more than what most TV stations ever devoted to the weather...then or now. Of course, back then they didn't have the flashy computerized graphics that people use nowadays. Wally had to draw his own maps on a 4-sided map board that could be swiveled around to display one map at a time. Sometimes he would even draw the maps during his presentation! I thought that was great. In my opinion, Wally Kinnan was the most accurate and dependable source of weather information in northeastern Ohio.
No comments:
Post a Comment