Snow hardest to predict, Rhodes says
When it comes to weather forecasting, the hardest thing to predict is snow, Ron Rhodes, weatherman at Channel 25 WEHT-TV, told the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce’s Rooster Booster Breakfast on Thursday.
“You’ve got to forecast how many inches and the time it will start days ahead of time,” he said.
Rhodes recalled a time when he called for flurries and the region got a foot of snow.
People didn’t let him forget that, he said.
But Rhodes’ gives a three-degree guarantee on his forecasts and said he has a 95% success rate these days.
He grew up in Owensboro at Sunset Drive and Clarke Drive in a house with eight people and one bathroom, he said.
Rhodes said he became interested in meteorology from watching the late Marcia Yockey, Evansville’s legendary forecaster, on TV.
Yockey, known for her stunts as well as her forecasts, did the weather on Evansville TV stations from 1953 to 1988.
Rhodes said he got to meet Yockey when he interviewed her on her 75th birthday.
“She was just as crazy as I expected, but not as sober,” he said with a laugh.
Rhodes said he got his start on TV with Owensboro Cablevision in 1990.
He said he got his meteorology degree from Mississippi State by correspondence while working in Paducah.
Highlights of weather in the region include the 2000 tornado in Owensboro, the region’s ice storm in 2009 and the tornadoes that swept across western Kentucky in December 2021, Rhodes said.
He said he started showing “Funky Fruit,” fruits and vegetables that look weird, on his forecast to liven things up about 20 years ago.
Today, that part of the forecast has a large following, Rhodes said.
“Carrots are the best,” he said, because they can grow in unusual shapes.
By Keith Lawrence Messenger-Inquirer