fan mail
Here’s the thing about Bill Meck: he kicks ass. And he’s a meteorologist. He’s an ass-kicking meteorologist.
From the WLEX website: In addition to loving the weather, Bill likes to bike, bowl, and play tennis in his spare time. Being a native Chicagoan, Meck is also a Die Hard Cub Fan, and has the card to prove it. He also has a collection of about 1,500 antique beer cans, some dating back to the 1940’s.
Bill began working at our local NBC affiliate around the time that we moved to Virginia. The ad campaign was “Who the heck is Bill Meck?” and it totally stuck.
I had a weird friend in high school who was obsessed with him. I think she got his autograph. That’s just weird.
Anyway. He started a program where he traveled to elementary schools to teach kids about weather, and he came to my sister’s school, I think. He also visited another friend’s school. Here’s what she remembers: Bill Meck came and talked to our class about weather. We even baked him a cake with his face on it…Crafty little 2nd graders. And later: Whatever, I was a stupid 7 year old kid eatin’ Bill Meck cake. But yeah, whatever the hell happened to him anyway!?
Well. He left Roanoke when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. Shortly after that, my family was on a vacation and stopped at a motel in Indiana or Kentucky or somewhere for the night. We turned on the TV and there he was! Bill Meck was doing the weather! And we all screamed and wrote with lots of exclamation points!
Because see, Bill Meck was awesome and we all liked him a lot and were sad to see him go.
So. He went to Kentucky, where he still does his Weather 101 presentations.
So why the hell am I devoting an entire entry to some meteorologist who used to work in town ten years or so ago?
Because he emailed me this week, that’s why.
In some sort of comment-related train of thought I’d left something in Cookie’s comments about Bill, which prompted B.Do to leave me a note about him, and so on. Somewhere along the line Bill himself ran across this correspondence which prompted him to write the following email:
From: “Bill Meck” < ***@***.net>
To: loriestories@hotmail.com
Subject: thanks for the memory
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 12:43:01 -0500
Lorie,
I just happened to run across your entry in a diary and I’m glad you remember me after all these years. You would have been somewhere around 13 when I left the ‘noke. We almost came back there in 1999…WSLS wanted me to come back, but we just couldn’t work out the details. Anyway, take care and say nice things about Jamey Singleton.
Sincerely,
Bill Meck
WLEX-TV Chief Meteorologist
This is awesome, seriously. Because for starters, as I think I’ve established, he’s really cool. But also, this is not the first time I’ve been contacted by a meteorologist in response to something I’ve written.
In fact, the other meteorologist who’s contacted me is the one and only Jamey Singleton, who will be anonymous no longer. Cached versions of my pages are still available in Google and he keeps visiting my page by Googling himself anyway, so I may as well keep using the name.
2 out of 2 meteorologists agree: I’m awesome.