Page 4 - BusinessWest May 27, 2024

Beyond the Forecast
Dave Hayes Cultivates Community Around Weather
BY JOSEPH BEDNAR
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ike many New Englanders, Dave Hayes remembers the significant weather events of his childhood, like the Mother’s Day snowstorm that struck the region in 1977, dropping a foot of snow on parts of Massachusetts, and the Blizzard of 1978 that crippled much of Southern New England the following February.
But he also remembers something else weather-related from his youth: watching a Boston-area forecast, intrigued by the bright colors of the radar dis-
play, and then almost immediately watching the skies outside his living room grow dark, and a storm suddenly arise.
“Five minutes later, what was on the radar was overhead, and something lit up inside of me. I became obsessed with the weather,” he said — to the point where he’d flip between local TV forecasts to compare them. “I found I gravitated toward the meteorologist who explained why the weather is doing what it’s doing, rather than just what it’s doing.”
Hayes never lost that obsession with the weather, and it led to an unlikely, donation- funded career as Dave Hayes the Weather Nut, through which he posts and discusses the
“I didn’t get it yet.
I didn’t understand virality and sharing with people and the idea that this might possibly be useful in some way.”
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