Why is it that despite the fact that we live in a climate where the weather hardly ever changes, we become enthralled with our TV meteorologists?
It wasn't the News-Press meltdown in the summer of 2006 that rescued me from blogging oblivion. It was my scoop about the sudden departure in August of that year of KEYT meteorologist Kate Wentzel. I was surprised at how many readers were disappointed to see Kate leave. Maybe it had something to do with the way she pronounced the phrase, "cut-off low?"
There are certainly a lot of weather talent scouts out there in TV land. A couple of years ago a number of them (all men I might add) wrote to tell me about Evelyn Taft, the weekend weather hottie on KCOY-12. In less than an Elk's Rodeo bull rider's minute she became the best thing to come out of Santa Maria since the tri-tip barbecue.
If Maria Bartiromo is the "Money Honey," I guess that makes Evelyn Taft the "Sunny Honey." (After all, we do live in Southern California.)
She may not have known an isobar from rebar, but who cares? After all, when it comes to weather, it's the messenger not the message.
Evelyn's fans were disappointed when she left KCOY in early 2009 to take a job with KRON in San Francisco. But now they have reason to rejoice. She has returned to SoCal and can now be seen on KCAL 9 out of L.A. (which we get on our cable here in Santa Barbara) doing the weather on their prime time news every night between 8 and 11 pm.
KCAL has another meteorologist on its staff who used to work in this area. Josh Rubenstein, formerly a weekend weather guy at KEYT.
Getting back to Taft, you may be surprised to find out that English is not her native language. She grew up speaking Russian.
And she should feel right at home in L.A. She graduated from USC.
Well, no one's perfect. Not even the Sunny Honey.
© 2010 by Craig Smith and www.craigsmithsblog.com
