People say, "What's the one profession you
can have where you can always be wrong and still have a job?" And of course their punchline is, "A meteorologist." I chuckle. Hello friends! This is James Spann. It's time to read some mean tweets. And thanks to all of you for sending in the
mean tweets. I really appreciate them from my heart. Out here in Trussville we have some unhappy
kids eating their milk sandwiches. Oh yeah, the memes are good. That face when you shut down the entire state
for rain. Even the trolls, I love them. Sometimes it probably crosses the line. But to me even if it's bad, they came to me. I'm honored! Think of all the weather people in the world,
or here, and they came to me. So it's a high honor. So even for the haters, I'm glad they're there. Here's your late afternoon update on Hurricane
Irma, still a category 5 storm that has moved across the... If I post something to YouTube today it'll
get a few hundred views. If I post something to YouTube on an active
weather day it'll get a few thousand views. But even for Irma when it was days away from
hitting the US, one day it got like 20 thousand views. The next day it was 50 thousand and I was
like, wow! That's really something! So the 3rd day I recorded went home, woke
up the next morning and got a call from one of my coworkers and saying, "Did you know
you're the best weatherman ever?" I was confused. And he was like, yeah. You're trending on Reddit. And my response was, "What's Reddit?" And literally it went viral. Some people said that it wasn't anything special,
and for me as a meteorologist, it wasn't . It's what I do everyday. If I remove myself from it it was fascinating
that a scientist made a presentation that went viral because people wanted to learn
and see. I had a very bad habit in first grade of staring
out the window all day. My first grade teacher, her name was Edna
Earl Porterfield. And that woman was mean. She was about 99 years old and she had the
upper body strength of a linebacker. One day, Ms. Porterfield just blew her top. She said, Spann! Get out here now! And I'm thinking, uh oh. But we got out in the hall and it was totally
an unexpected situation. I saw this woman do something I've never seen
her do before; she smiled. And then she gave me something. And I'm thinking, we're really in the weird
zone now. It was a book from the library. And it was a book about clouds. She thought I was interested in weather because
I stared out the window all the time. And that little book I read in first grade,
I wish I could find a copy of that, started me on this road to learning about weather. I always had a simmering interest in weather. As a kid, I think everybody does. In 3rd grade My teacher Ms. Costello, she
took the class out and we laid in the grass and we looked up at the clouds. And we were trying to figure out what shapes
they looked like. So it was just a fun, artsy project. But as we were doing that in my mind I was
thinking, how was it possible those clouds could float? Because they're made of water, water is heavy,
yet they float, the disappear, they can move over someone's house, drop an inch of rain
and then an hour later they're gone. And to me that, and even to this day, it's
still amazing. I know the science. It's chemistry, it's H20 vs 02 and nitrogen,
and all that stuff. But intuitively it doesn't make sense that
clouds float, but they do. When ABC3340 formed it was in 1996 and they
gave me freedom to go on the air anytime I wanted to. I had full freedom. That was a new concept. Understand, everybody here, you'd go on and
go off, go on and go off. In '98, a couple of years after we were on
the air, we had a horrible, horrible EF5 tornado. And we stayed on the air all night that night
without going back to programming. First time that's ever happened here. Ok Mark. That would be Oak Grove High School and Lock
17 road. That's the area here in western Jefferson
County. The tornado was past Oak Grove. And since we've had reports of damage at Oak
Grove High School, Lock 17 out in this area, that means this thing is on the ground. And as it approaches that site... Yeah we got a power failure. Did you guys see that? Look at the lights down there go off. And it defined our little TV station. We grew up that night. The TV station grew up. I grew up to some degree because I'd never
done that. I wanted to do it in Dallas. I wanted to do it at 6 and 13. I just wasn't allowed to do that. But I learned you can do this and people will
watch. And I think people were really appreciative
of that. It's going to be and extremely uncomfortable
situation. If you're in your home with no lights, possibly
no electricity, and for 8 to 10 hours, you're feeling and hearing the wind and hearing things
flying around outside. Try to prepare for that psychologically. Make sure your kids are ok because it may
not be a very pleasant experience. Even before I was in high school I always
thought to myself I do not want a job where what I say or do can impact someone's life
because I didn't want the responsibility. It turns out most jobs that people do do impact
people's live, whether you're a mechanic, or a doctor, or even a school teacher. It is difficult for me standing in a studio
with half dozen other people and a green wall to realize, there are hundred of thousands
of people out there. Some of them are in true fear of their lives
during hurricanes and severe weather. But I do what I do and I don't really focus
on that until after the fact when people say oh yeah, you said. To this day people will stop me and say, oh
I remember during Ivan I was listening to you on the radio because people lost electricity,
and you told us how the winds would shift, and how the rain would last this long, and
they'd pick up. You told us how we should go outside and look
at the stars because we had no electricity and the city was dark . And that's the only
time you can see the Milky Way. So people remember that. I look back on those people that are in pain
because of loss of life during tornadoes. And for me to have the chance to go in front
of some green wall and help prevent that from happening to somebody else, it's a marvelous
opportunity. We're going to get rain on Saturday. About an inch. Doesn't look too far out of the ordinary... I can honestly say I get very few complaints
about my forecast, which is good. Now I do get a lot of jokes about the weather,
and I don't argue it. I know people are just having fun with me. But that tells me that they feel they know
me enough to be human and not step back and be intimidated. In that regard, it's fun. Doing this job, it's a balancing act. And for the young people it's hard. Twitter can be brutal. Facebook can be brutal. Where they struggle with it and it's an acquired
skill. It's dealing with the constant negativity. But you just have to count to 10, and when
the nice ones come in you put that in a little folder; Nice Mail, Hate Mail. And you can look at both of them, just keep
it balanced. You've got to keep it balanced. To work this diversity of weather, it's just
fascinating. I could not imagine working anywhere else
other than Birmingham, Alabama.
Spot the shunarrah
James Spann if you can read this, god bless you, bro.
You came to my elementary school to talk about weather one time and it was cool as hell.
Keep on forecasting, man.
How many of you outside of the Mobile area knew who Allan Seals was?