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Q: Can you imagine going back to the days when you used those pull-down maps?

A: It’s funny, because I used to dream about what we have now. So much so that I used to kind of hodgepodge it together. For instance, we had chromakey [a special effect that allows substitution of a different background] when I was in Albany, but I wanted to be able to draw on the maps exactly the way we do with the graphic systems now, so my solution — I actually came up with this kind of cockamamie solution — was to pull a plexiglass board over the chromakey, the blank wall, and I would have places that I knew represented where the United States should fall, and then I would draw the [weather] fronts on that plexiglass, just like we today draw the fronts on the graphics system. It was like a first attempt to do what we do now. Because it’s so helpful to be able to show people what’s going on. It used to be we would just have these little magnetic markers that we would stick on and things like that.

Q: How did the Weather Channel change things for local meteorology?

A: I love the Weather Channel. I loved it from day one, and when they first came on, they were really funny. They didn’t know what they were doing, and they had really funny oddball commercials, and they didn’t realize things that normal TV stations would realize. For instance, everybody stood in front of a podium, so you could tell everyone’s height very clearly. So somebody that was let’s say shorter than me — because I’m pretty short — would, like, barely clear over the podium. They made a lot of little funny errors like that. And I’ve always loved them because they’re just there anytime; you can get a radar, you can get a weather map anytime. And I always thought that was really cool.

Q: How often do you meet people who blame you for the weather?

A: You know, for some reason, I’m not blamed that much. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m not wrong, because even though I have a good track record, Mother Nature is always going to beat me. For some reason, I don’t have too much of a problem. The thing that bothers me is that people often will say something when that’s what they hear in general. Sometimes people are blaming me for other people’s forecasts. That happens.

Q: Is it hard not to get defensive?

A: Yeah, that’s just me. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, because I do get a little bit defensive. It’s like I want to shake them and say, "But you didn’t watch! You didn’t see what I really said!"

Q: Do you think people in New England overreact to the weather? Do you ever feel like saying to people, "Hey, relax — it’s just the weather"?

A: Yeah, and you know, the media in general around the country, not just here, promotes it very heavily. And that’s a double-edged sword. It gives me a lot of exposure, a lot of time to explain what I’m thinking to the audience, but it also is going to numb them a little bit when there’s a really, really huge [weather] event that comes.

Q: You’ve done a lot of live shots over the years; do any stand out as particularly scary or fun?

A: Oh yeah. I did this live shot on top of Mount Washington, and also I did one in the middle of Hurricane Gloria. Both of those stand out. The Mount Washington one, I was there on a fairly tranquil day when the winds were only blowing 65 miles per hour sustained, and people weren’t thinking twice about it, but when I was on the air, my face was contorted, pulled back. Really, my face was literally stretched. And I was doing that from on top of Mount Washington while below, down in the valley, we had the anchor team doing the newscast live, and the anchors, there wasn’t even a breath of air: their hair was perfectly in place, nothing. And they looked at me and they said, "Gee, it is different up there." I’ll never forget that.

The other one was when I went into Hurricane Gloria; we found a spot where I could go that would be in the eye of the storm, in 1985, in Connecticut. The thing is, the eye did not go over Boston. The eye missed Boston. We just got the wind and some of the squally rains. So I was on the air live when it was sunny in the [eye] there, while Boston itself was in the midst of the storm. That was very exciting. And that’s actually when I first got noticed; I was here starting in ’84, but I didn’t really feel I got noticed very much until I was in the middle of that storm.

Q: Does weather ever scare you?

A: Thunderstorms used to scare me. But they don’t anymore.

Q: What’s the longest shift you ever worked because of a storm?

A: It was that Hurricane Gloria — 48 hours I was awake. I was actually awake for 48 hours. And I guess you could say I worked that entire period of time, from the moment I got up to the moment I went to sleep. Wait a minute — 42 hours. I want to be accurate here.

Q: Is there a lot of competition among meteorologists in Boston?

A: You know, they’re all so good, and we all respect each other so much. I tend to be a little competitive in general, just by nature. But I don’t consider anyone else’s forecast because that would create what I call "forecast bias." And therefore I’m just in sort of a little tunnel, just doing the best that I can.

Q: When people have nothing to say to someone, they often talk about the weather. What do you talk about?

A: [Laughing] I talk about snowmaking. I make my own snow at home. I have four machines. First I bought one that was sold for home use, but commercially; then I figured out how to make them. Since then, it takes about six months of my year; I tinker with this. Now I’m tinkering on how to do this automated, so I can actually control the machines from work.

Q: How much snow do you make?

A: This past winter I made about 50 inches twice, when there was no snow on the ground. Basically, I like to cross-country ski a lot, so I not only play with the kids in it and go sledding, but I also like to cross-country ski in it, if there’s not enough snow on the ground otherwise. But then the neighbors see me on this patch of snow — it’s big, but it’s still relatively small, compared to the whole area — just skiing around on it, and they think I’m kind of crazy.

Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com