E-Mail This Article to a Friend Forecast for success WHDH-TV meteorologist Todd Gross celebrates 20 years of breaking the bad news to New Englanders BY TAMARA WIEDER

YOU KNOW YOU’VE done it: blamed your local meteorologist when it rained during your family picnic, snowed the day you were trying to catch a flight out of town, or sweltered at that outdoor summer wedding you didn’t even want to attend.

Just don’t tell Todd Gross you think it’s his fault. Celebrating 20 years at WHDH-TV Channel 7 this month, the station’s chief meteorologist just might get a little defensive. Despite some opinion to the contrary, weather forecasting, Gross says, has gotten markedly better over the years — and with the improvement has come an increase in the public’s expectation of just how accurate the local forecasts will be.

But Gross, with his passion for all things weather-related, is happy with the challenge.

Q: How did you get into meteorology to begin with?

A: I was very, very little. On the order of maybe five. And a couple of things fascinated me when I was really little, such as Hurricane Donna, which happened back in 1960. Basically I was mostly interested in snowstorms and hurricanes as a really little kid, and I was also interested in astronomy. So I already had practice by the age of five in terms of doing a presentation, because the rest of my friends were all four. So what I would do is, I would gather them around, and I would give them little lessons in weather and astronomy. That’s as far back as I remember.

And then what happened was, in years subsequent to that, I grew up in New York, and the weather coverage on television was done, generally speaking, by people that weren’t meteorologists, generally speaking, people who didn’t know what they were doing. I felt very righteously indignant that the person who’s on the air should be the person who is doing the forecast. And I felt that at an early age, like seventh grade. A lot of kids get into it around that age, seventh or eighth grade. And I decided that I would have to be that person, and make sure that there was no more of this charlatan stuff going on. That was my naive, youthful outlook on it. So with my intense interest in winter storms, and all storms of all kinds, thunderstorms and hurricanes, I mean, it just was a natural fit. I had always wanted to do it. My father wanted me to be a dentist. He just didn’t see that I would be able to do this at all.

Q: How’d you end up in Boston?

A: That’s the other thing: I had always wanted to be in Boston as well. In 1969, for instance, we had this really, really great storm that you got up in Boston. It was called the 100-Hour Storm, because it lasted forever and it produced 30, 40 inches of snow in some places, and I used to sit listening to the radio — I had a really good radio, a really great AM radio that I used to listen all over the country to different stations. At night you could get stations out to Detroit, Buffalo, places like that. But by day, I could get a Boston station really clearly. I used to listen to Don Kent. So I would listen to what was going on up here; I was always following what was going on up here. It was always a little bit more exciting than New York.

But anyway, in 1980, I went to Rochester, New York, then to Albany, New York, then to the Satellite News Channel, which is CNN Headline News now. Then this opportunity came up for a weekend position in Boston. They didn’t really jump at first, so I actually came up for an interview. I brought a whole bunch of topographic maps with me, showing my intense interest in the local climate and topography, and they thought I was crazy, and I said, "Look, just try me out on the air." And that’s what happened: on April 8, 1984, they tried me out on the air and kept me.

Q: So much about TV meteorology has changed in the past 20 years. What are the most significant changes that come to mind?

A: Well, you know, it’s very interesting you should say that, because I’ve really identified a very nice problem: the forecasts have gotten so good within 24 to 48 hours, that we’re now forecasting way beyond that. And that’s creating a problem. The problem is, people just take it for granted that the forecast is so good 24 to 48 hours in advance, so now they think of us as wrong when we change our minds prior to that period. And actually we’re not wrong; it’s just that we’re so good one to two days in advance, the computer models helping us along, that we actually go further out in time. So the big question is, should we really do that? And the public wants it so bad. And I know why the public wants it, because I want it when I go on a vacation really bad. I look at those maps a week in advance, even though I know they’re not usually right, when I’m going away. I want to know exactly what’s going to happen. I know that in reality, I’m looking at an approximation.

So we’ve created a new problem, and that is, we’ve continued to perpetuate the myth that weather forecasting isn’t that great, because now we’re going further out in time. We are now at the point three days in advance where we used to be two days in advance; two days, we used to be one day. Since we’re projecting much further out in time, we still are continuing to be challenged. That’s the nature of the beast. Mother Nature still has the upper hand.