Storms of Protest Buffet TV Forecasters

BOSTON —  Obscene phone calls, hate mail, a hangman’s noose: That’s what TV meteorologists get just for doing their jobs.

Frustrated by extreme weather like the recent blast of arctic air across the Midwest and East, some tempestuous viewers blame the messenger.

“They’ll swear at you. They’ll cuss you out on the answering machine,” said Boston weather forecaster Bruce Schwoegler of WBZ-TV. “There are people who feel that we do control the weather.”

Most viewers know meteorologists just forecast, but some grant them God-like authority, holding them personally responsible for blizzards and numbing cold.

Schwoegler said a meteorologist at his station once received a tiny twine hangman’s noose in the mail.

At WATE-TV in Knoxville, Tenn., Ken Weathers--his real name--said a woman once called him to scream because her electricity was knocked out by a storm.

Ashley Chisholm, forecaster for WHAS-TV in Louisville, Ky., said she no longer goes to the grocery store in bad weather.

“I can’t get my food in the cart because everybody stops you and says, ‘What’s the deal with all this rain? When are you going to stop it?’ They actually blame you for it,” Chisholm said. “There’s only so much you can take.”

And recently, when a record-breaking 21 below zero chilled Chicago, Tom Skilling of WGN-TV got a typed letter accusing him of being too extreme when he called the cold front “brutal.”

“This fringe element comes out after every spate of bad weather,” Skilling said. “I think it’s a ‘kill the messenger’ syndrome.

“There’s such hate. They pretty much tell you to drop dead,” he said.

But some viewers looking for warmer weather take a more positive approach. Chisholm said people have called asking her to “please put sunshine in her computer.”

George Kessler at KBJR-TV in Duluth, Minn., got a bribe the other day. The letter said: “Here’s a dollar for a temperature of zero. Maybe $10 if you’d get us to 50.”

Sociologist Paul Schervish said TV meteorologists provoke viewers because their theatrics--”shaman-like” maps and radar machines--give weather reports the aura of decree by high priest.

“They’re not the reporters but the producers of the weather. They say, ‘I have good news for you.’ They don’t say, ‘The weather is bad news.’ They personalize it,” said Schervish, a professor at Boston College.

But Skilling said some viewers might be angered when forecasters focus on damaging storms and record lows.

“That fascination is sometimes seen as excitement--the willful desire to inflict pain and suffering on our viewers,” he said.

Blaming meteorologists for bad weather gives viewers a feeling of control over people they sometimes see as a family member, said Ellen Langer, a Harvard University psychology professor.

“And, like a family member, they can be hated or loved,” she said.