Idaho Falls

Weather is one of those topics that has instant relevance anywhere you go. It's one of the few things that everyone on the planet has in common, whether they care about it or not. While every once in a while it can be difficult to tell what season it is supposed to be, we here in Idaho Falls gen- erally pay respectful homage to the seasons caused by the Earth's spinning and wob- bling through space. Trying to predict the weather on a day- to-day basis may not be as dicey as running down the interstate to the casino in Fort Hall, but for the people tied to making a living off the land, the results can be just as rewarding or devastating as betting the family farm on red 16 and spinning the wheel. Accurate knowledge of the weather is not just important to our economy, but to human safety as well. Nowadays, our smartphones are loaded with all kinds of weather-related apps that will tell you every bit of weather minutiae you might ever want to know. We forget it is just a bunch of predictions based on a bunch of algorithms in a computer. While far more complex than the Old Farmer's Almanac, it's generally no more accurate than when Ben Franklin created Poor Richard's Almanack, back in the mid-1700s. Today's generation of kids who have had the TV addiction of past generations replaced by addiction to their smartphones might not be aware of it, but we still have a human-based weather forecasting system in place on our local television news. If you look real hard and don't blink between all the car advertisements, you can catch what today is called a meteorologist doing the weather segment. In the less politically correct times, they were called "Weathermen." Unfortunately, the only contemporary reference kids today might have is the character of Brick Tamland played by Steve Carell in the Anchorman movies. Here in Idaho Falls, we have been fortunate to have some weathermen that were that mixture of dedicated meteorologist and showman that it takes to make viewers tune in. He was just before my time here, but Lloyd Lindsey Young was such a showman that he actually has his own Wikipedia entry! Young's antics in predicting the weather created a fol- lowing that still talks about him today and allowed him to move up into larger media markets and into the national weather scene. He may have rarely made correct predictions, but he was always entertaining and even ended up in a Beastie Boy's song! On the more serious side, we have had people like Steve Cannon who has done a yeoman's job of trying to predict Eastern Idaho's fickle weather for over 40 years! He and the now deceased Ken Torrey not only predicted the weather but played active parts in the community. Back in the good old days before all the TV stations got merged together as a matter of survival, Steve and Ken added their own special touches to try and attract viewers to their respective stations. Likewise, the last gen- eration of TV meteorologists before the dig- ital blitz like Todd Kunz and Michael Coates have paid their dues doing the weather dance in front of the blank green screens so viewers in Arco could see the winter storm moving in to bury them. No discussion of forecasters in Eastern Idaho would be complete without mention- ing Scott Stevens of chemtrail fame. Scott's theories led him to appearances on the Art Bell Show and a worldwide following of conspiracy theorists online globally. His whereabouts today are unknown. When local TV news is finally killed off by the internet it is probably the local weather segment and not the commercials that will be missed most. Hey Google! (or Alexa) what's the weather outside like? 62 IDAHO FALLS MAGAZINE MARCH 2019 IF Out There by Gregg Losinski In Like A Lion . . . Out Like Anyone's Guess

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