An inside look at what it’s like to be a meteorologist in Charlotte
If you were a kid who grew up in the Northeast, you hung on every word uttered by your town’s TV meteorologist, waiting for them to give you hope that maybe, just maybe, there’d be a snow day for you tomorrow. In our more forgiving Charlotte climate, meteorologists still have a special ability to make or break your day.
Will the weekend be right for a trip to the Whitewater Center? Will your commute be chaos because everyone panics as it starts pouring?
WSOC-TV meteorologist Vicki Graf is one of the people you rely on as you’re planning your week (and your wardrobe). Now she’s offering thoughts on working backwards on live TV, predicting forces that seem unpredictable, and why she may be one of the few people who isn’t overly enthused at the idea of a sunny, 70-degree day:
When you’re predicting the forecast, how sure are you?
When we have days where we can tell that it’s just going to be dry and sunny, we’re very confident with our forecast. If there’s something big coming, say a cold front or maybe a hurricane, we look at models in order to get our forecast. They can be very split, so one might do something completely different from the other. We try to gauge well what’s the best possible fit for us here and we let people know when there are uncertainties.
Do people blame you personally for the weather?
Absolutely. And with social media it makes it a lot easier for them to hide behind a computer. Maybe they changed their plans because of it, but the weather can be so tricky here. That’s why we make it a point to say things like, “Not everybody will see the rainfall today.” Along with that, you don’t always get credit when you get the forecast right.
How long did it take you to get used to working backwards on camera (pointing at a screen behind you)?
I was really awkward at first, so it took me a couple of months to get comfortable in front of the camera, and a couple of weeks to really figure out where I was pointing.
What’s your favorite type of weather to cover?
For me a boring day is when it’s 70 degrees and sunny out. I don’t like that. I like it when I’m not at work though! I love snowstorms. They can also be the most challenging, especially here because we’re right on that rain-snow line a lot of times, and so, say, Lake Norman might see three inches of snow and people in Rock Hill see half an inch. Usually we’re stuck at the station sometimes for two days covering those events. I keep an air mattress in my car and find an empty office and that’s where I sleep — if I get sleep — but we love covering stuff like that.
How do you find clothes to wear daily? Do people ever comment on your attire or notice if you repeat?
They do notice. In fact I write down what I wear every day so I don’t repeat outfits within hopefully a month. It’s taken me years to build up my wardrobe. You can’t wear patterns on-air, and I can’t wear green because I would disappear in front of the green screen. Anytime you find a dress that you know is TV-friendly, you snag it. People aren’t going to like everything you wear and that’s understandable, so you just brush it off.
What’s your favorite thing about Charlotte weather?
I like that we get a lot of weather here. We get storms, we get seasons, we get tropical systems, and we get snow. We also get this neat feature called the Carolina Wedge, where depending on the direction the wind is coming from, the air gets stuck against the mountains so we’re siting under clouds, cooler temperatures and drizzle for days on end. We see that more during this time of year.
Photo: Vicki Graf
This story was originally published October 13, 2016 at 11:00 PM with the headline "An inside look at what it’s like to be a meteorologist in Charlotte."